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By Kenneth Tufford

Trenton recently passed legislation expanding NJ’s medical marijuana program. Allowing for dozens of new dispensaries, easing eligibility rules, reducing the number of yearly mandatory doctor visits, increasing patient’s monthly prescription limit, ending the 6.6% sales tax on medical cannabis -- these are all great and necessary changes that address numerous issues plaguing the state’s program.

However, while some are designed to ease much of the financial burden of medicating with cannabis, the massive cost alone for a monthly allotment -- easily over $1,000 for many patients -- negates any positive effects these changes may have. One proposal that was overlooked for this bill that could have better addressed this financial issue, along with some others, was the idea to allow patients to grow a small amount of their own cannabis at home, a provision allowed by over half of the states in the nation that have a medical marijuana program.

While it’s great to know that patients will now only have to pay $100 for one doctor appointment each year instead of four, that the registration fee is $100 less, and the sales tax for medicine will end in 2022, these charges are but a fraction of the overall expense to medicate with cannabis.

It often costs over $500 at dispensaries for one ounce of cannabis, and many patients are allotted up to two or three ounces! It’s possible in New Jersey for patients to pay close to $20,000 a year, just for the cannabis alone! And none of this is covered by health insurance! Nothing! Not the cannabis, not the doctor’s appointment, not the registration; it’s all out-of-pocket -- 100% -- from patients, many of whom have already exhausted their savings on traditional treatments.

Allowing homegrown cannabis can immensely reduce this unnecessary burden on patients. If patients with a two-ounce monthly allotment were allowed to grow just six plants at a time, it’s conceivable for them to grow one ounce from each plant every six months, for a total of 12 homegrown ounces a year. They could potentially save over $6,000 a year!

Besides the financial burden, we also need to consider the fact that there’s a massive variety of strains of marijuana, each with their own unique medical effects. Patients need to be sure that a specific strain of marijuana that is particularly useful for their own symptoms is available when they need it.

Unfortunately, from the very beginning of the program, all New Jersey dispensaries have proven unreliable in ensuring patients can purchase the specific strains they need. A strain may be available for several months but then suddenly disappear for several months. Or, a dispensary may decide that the strain that has been so helpful putting you to sleep is no longer profitable. Now patients are hunting around the shops for weeks, testing new strains, hoping one will work as well as the last.

Allowing homegrown cannabis would give patients the ability to focus on specific strains that they must have for their condition, eliminating the anxiety of discovering that their medicine is no longer available.

Finally, allowing patients to grow their own medicine is therapeutic even within itself! Consider a backyard vegetable garden. One prepares the soil, lays out the seeds, tends the plants, pulls the weeds, and finally harvests the food. There is that sense of pride in a job well done; just the fact alone that you grew the food is enough to make it look, smell, and taste that, much, better!

There is no difference regarding homegrown marijuana. Patients who have grown cannabis at home have reported lower levels of stress and elevated moods. A lot of medical marijuana patients are disabled and unable to work, which can eventually lead to depression. Growing marijuana from home gives them back a sense of duty and responsibility, feelings absolutely vital to a healthy state of mind. Homegrown does all this, and it can save people buckets of money, too.

New Jersey must reconsider its ban on homegrown medical marijuana. That one provision alone can provide so much more and better relief for patients, from the money in their wallets to their own mental welfare. It is simply obvious that it is the right thing to do.

Kenneth Tufford is a retired public school teacher who uses cannabis to help alleviate many of the symptoms associated with the treatment of a rare tumor in his spinal cord.

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