NJ medical marijuana card for opioid use? NJ 'exploring' weed in fight vs. opioid crisis

Mike Davis , James Nash | Asbury Park Press

Show Caption Hide Caption Outgoing Prosecutor details realities of Ocean County's opioid battle Outgoing Ocean County Prosecutor Joseph Coronato details the realities he faced when taking office and how his agency has battled the county's opioid epidemic.

TRENTON — Opioid addicts in New Jersey, no matter how they got hooked on the deadly drugs, including heroin and prescription painkillers, could soon be prescribed medical marijuana to help them kick their habit, under a new proposal from the state Health Department.

A rule change would make prescription marijuana available to potentially thousands of opioid abusers and bring Garden State policy in line with more liberal policy measures in place in neighboring and other states.

"Physicians should consider marijuana as another appropriate treatment for patients with many medical conditions, especially diseases for which conventional therapies aren’t working for their patients," Dr. Shereef Elnahal, the state health commissioner, said in a statement.

Under current guidelines, someone with an "opioid use disorder" is only eligible to receive a New Jersey medical marijuana card — essentially a state "permission slip" to use weed for medical reasons — if they became addicted to opioids while trying to manage chronic pain from a musculoskeletal disorder.

Pending final approval, individuals with opioid disorders could be prescribed medical marijuana without regard to how they arrived at their addiction.

RELATED: How the Murphy Administration is tackling the opioid crisis

In New York and Illinois, doctors can recommend medical marijuana for any condition where they could otherwise prescribe an opioid. Additionally, those states and Pennsylvania also allow patients enrolled in substance abuse treatment programs to use medical marijuana as an opioid replacement.

According to the state Health Department, about 3.2 million opioid prescriptions were written between Jan. 1 and Sept. 27 and the drugs are on pace to result in an estimated 3,000 deaths in the Garden State. Watch a video at the top of the page to learn how outgoing Ocean County Prosecutor Joseph Coronato struggled with opioid deaths at the Shore.

Last year, 2,750 people in New Jersey died from suspected opioid overdoses, nearly eight each day and a leap of about 24 percent over 2016, according to government statistics.

In 2014, the Journal of the American Medical Association reported that, while further testing needs to be done, medical marijuana "may be advocated as part of a comprehensive package of policies to reduce the population risk of opioid analgesics."

On Monday, the department announced that the number of New Jersey medical marijuana patients had hit 34,000, officially double the number of patients in the system when Gov. Phil Murphy took office. Murphy campaigned on promises of both legal weed and an expanded medical marijuana program.

Elnahal attributed the increase in patients to the labeling of anxiety, migraines, chronic pain and Tourette's Syndrome as qualifying conditions for marijuana. About 800 doctors are involved in the program, with 300 joining the program this year.

RELATED: Ocean County among hardest hit by opioid deaths

Elnahal has made the rounds to hospitals recently, delivering lectures on medical marijuana in the hopes of bringing more doctors to the system.

But not everyone is on board, such as Dr. Edward Chastka, a psychiatrist who attended an American College of Orgonomy seminar on marijuana in New Brunswick. Chastka said marijuana has not undergone the normal scrutiny of medical treatment because it remains illegal federally.



“The problem with medical marijuana is that it’s not really meeting the standards of medicine,” he said in an interview.

If the state's medical marijuana review panel approves of opioid use as a qualifying condition, the Health Department could implement it without a legislative vote.

NJ marijuana legalization: St. Peter's University Hospital medical student talks legal weed “Of course you smell marijuana around, on the street,” said one medical student at St. Peter's University Hospital in New Brunswick.

There are six medical marijuana dispensaries in New Jersey, but the state is currently reviewing applications to issue another six licenses. The winners of those six licenses — two each will be awarded in North Jersey, Central Jersey and South Jersey — were scheduled to be announced on Nov. 1.

MORE: Jersey Shore overdue for medical marijuana dispensary

Earlier this month, Elnahal said the process would take longer "to complete a full review of these applications," an estimated 40,000 pages of material.

Over 100 companies filed nearly 150 applications for dispensaries throughout the state, and many local land use boards are in the process of hearing proposals for dispensaries.

RELATED: Who wants to grow medical marijuana in South Jersey?

Mike Davis; @byMikeDavis: 732-643-4223; mdavis@gannettnj.com