Lisa Segal wakes up every morning locked in a fetal position, her muscles in spasm from multiple sclerosis.

She’s 59 years old, and has tried everything. The only medicine that relaxes those muscles and settles her nausea is marijuana.

So when her supply runs out, she drives an hour from her Gloucester County home to Philadelphia, and walks the streets to buy pot, leaning on her cane. It scares her to death, but it’s better than spending her remaining years curled up in bed, in pain.

“These are not people I want to deal with,” she says. “I have nightmares that the police are going to come into my house and arrest me.”

The medical marijuana movement aims to end this official cruelty, and allow people like Segal to live in dignity. That was the idea, anyway, when the Legislature passed the law last year. It was supposed to be up and running by now.

But thanks to Gov. Chris Christie, this effort has gone terribly off track. So Segal still has to sneak to Philly for her fix, like a criminal.

“The way the rules are written now, I’ll have no choice but to continue doing what I’m doing,” she says.

The rules drafted by the Christie administration amount to bureaucratic sabotage. And the political and legal fights they have sparked mean the delay is certain to continue for months.

One rule places a limit on potency, so the legal pot can't be as strong as the varieties Segal can find on the street. Home delivery was allowed at first, and then banned, for reasons the Department of Health will not explain.

If a doctor wants to prescribe pot, he needs to warn patients every three months that some experts believe this treatment is ineffective, and that marijuana can be addictive.

Each distribution center can carry only three strains of pot, and hold no excess inventory. They can’t make pot cookies or brownies, even for patients with cancer or AIDS who have lung problems.

You get the idea. Sure, the law is on the books. But it was signed by former Gov. Jon Corzine, and Christie never liked it. So he is trying to strangle this baby in its crib by drafting one unworkable rule after another. Call it bureaucratic sabotage.

And Democrats, true to form, are divided and ineffective in the face of another Christie hurricane.

Sen. Nick Scutari, a prime sponsor, is taking a hard line. He wants to block implementation of the law until Christie agrees to stop the sabotage. Resolutions that require a rewrite of the rules have passed both houses.

But Assemblyman Reed Gusciora, the other sponsor, cut a separate deal with Christie to make a few changes, and hope for the best later on.

“It’s not perfect,” Gusciora says. “But I figured let’s at least get it started, and with time and people complaining it could be expanded.”

That divide among Democrats is giving Christie a new opportunity to delay. His spokesman, Mike Drewniak, says the administration will redraft the rules based on the compromise with Gusciora, not the more demanding resolutions passed by both houses. So the Legislature may reject the revised rules, creating yet another delay.

“At every juncture, there is a new obstacle,” Scutari says. “Christie is a master of divide and conquer, and he obviously realized I’d be tougher to negotiate with, so he went to Reed.”

Christie’s fear is that New Jersey could wind up like California, where Gen Xers skateboard to the pot clinics for a cure to their “headaches.” So he’s swung the pendulum in the other direction, drafting the tightest rules in the country by far.

And patients are paying the price. Mike Oliveri, a Jersey native living in California, is withering away with muscular dystrophy. He can't live in his home state, he says.

"I'm a patient, and I'm dying," he says. "This is a complete political game."

Segal has found a friend in Philly who buys pot for her on occasion, so she may not have to walk the streets as often.

If she could talk to the governor, she says, she’d give him this simple message: “Take the politics out of this and find the compassion in your heart. You are dealing with severely sick patients.”

Tom Moran may be reached at tmoran@starledger.com or (973) 392-5728.