TRENTON — Chronically ill people shut out of New Jersey's medical marijuana program will have to wait another year before the state considers expanding the list of conditions covered under the law, a state health department spokeswoman said last week.

The state’s medical marijuana law, signed four years ago, required the health department to consider adding new diseases requested by the public after it submitted two annual reports, beginning in 2011, charting the program’s progress. It also required the health department to produce a biennial report in 2012 and every two years after assessing whether there were enough growers to meet demand.

But the Christie administration, which delayed implementing the program to make sure it was tough enough to detect cheaters, didn’t issue any reports until Feb. 27 — a month after an appeals court ordered it.

The reports concluded that even though only three of the six approved dispensaries are growing and selling marijuana, they are "capable of meeting the needs" of the 1,670 registered patients. The health department said the dispensaries were meeting the needs of patients, but only 78 percent of the registered patients had made at least one pot purchase as of Feb. 18.

But it is too soon to add more illnesses and place greater demands on the program, Health Department Commissioner Mary O’Dowd’s spokeswoman Donna Leusner said.

"With three alternative treatment centers in the pipeline, the program as envisioned by the legislature still needs to grow further to accommodate the demand that will accompany the addition of new medical conditions," Leusner wrote in an email. "Before the next annual report, the program will continue to expand and give us more experience before we are required by the rules to consider adding new medical conditions."

The decision disappointed patients and their advocates, whose lawsuit over the program’s slow implementation prompted the court to order the state to submit the progress reports.

They say patients suffering with conditions such as severe chronic pain — which a Star-Ledger review found is recognized by most other states with medical marijuana laws — deserve the right to make a case.

Even though it filed its reports two years late, the health department says it’s not required to consider adding new conditions until after it submits a second annual report next year. Of the reports finished last month, one was called an annual report, the other a biennial report.

Advocates said by doing this, the state used a technicality to stall a decision on adding more conditions.

"Our understanding was after these two reports, we could begin to start the process of adding qualifying conditions. It’s hard for me to believe they are not just using another delaying tactic," said Ken Wolski, founder of the Coalition for Medical Marijuana of New Jersey.

"These limitations on the qualifying conditions was arbitrary and done solely to limit the extent of this program," said Wolski, a nurse. "To delay adding new conditions is just cruel to people."

James Price of Cherry Hill said he is in enough constant pain from a workplace injury in 1999 to be deemed permanently disabled and prescribed a fistful of ineffective narcotic pain relievers, but he is not impaired enough for New Jersey’s medical marijuana program.

"To be told that I can poison my body with pharmaceuticals but not have access to the most therapeutic, natural substance on the planet because of some out-of-date agenda is unconscionable," Price said.

A Star-Ledger review of the 19 states and Washington D.C. that operate a medical marijuana program reveal every other state had a longer list of qualifying medical conditions, and an at least an annual process that lets the public ask the health departments to expand the list. (Maryland has no program but allows medical marijuana by providing a legal defense for patients facing possession charges.)

The review also found New Jersey is one of five states that does not recognize severe and chronic pain as a qualifying medical condition for medical marijuana — and the only one to require two annual reports before the public can request new medical conditions be added.

Roseanne Scotti, state director for the Drug Policy Alliance, said she was disappointed the state was not receptive to making changes if it meant helping more people. She noted that veterans in states like New Mexico use cannabis to combat Post Traumatic Stress Disorder: "One of our priorities is to get it added here."

"We know when we were trying to get the law passed there were people who were left out," Scotti said. "Given the concerns about the over-prescription of opioids that can produce overdoses, this is very disappointing."

New Jersey’s program is open to patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig’s disease), multiple sclerosis, terminal cancer, muscular dystrophy, inflammatory bowel disease including Crohn’s disease, and terminal illness with a prognosis of less than 12 months.

It also allows medical marijuana to help treat those with seizure disorders including epilepsy, intractable skeletal muscular spasticity and glaucoma if traditional medicine has failed, and severe or chronic pain, severe nausea or vomiting, cachexia or wasting syndrome caused by HIV/AIDS and cancer.

The annual and biennial reports may be found here.

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