Yesterday New Jersey issued its first permit to a facility that allows the cultivation of medicial marijuana in a town also known as "Park Slope West." The Greenleaf Compassion Center in Montclair will be allow to grow the plant, but not sell it, as an additional permit is necessary pending another state inspection. "The patients we work with and represent are ecstatic," New Jersey's director of the Drug Policy Alliance, Roseanne Scotti says in a release. "They have waited so long for safe and legal access to medical marijuana and this gives them hope that that wait is coming to an end and relief is in sight.”
Passed in 2010, New Jersey's medical marijuana initiative has languished in bureaucracy. Last month the head of Greenleaf, Joe Stevens, said he was "foolish" to believe that governor Chris Christie would ever allow the program to get off the ground, and said he was considering "resorting to the legal process." It appears the squeaky wheel gets the stickiest stash.
A total of six treatment centers are allowed under the law, but only one other has received a permit for a space, and no other center other than Greenleaf has a permit to grow. We're looking forward to rooting for Chris Christie when President Obama comes to raid his state's medical marijuana dispensaries, as he has repeatedly done, despite his campaign promise to the contrary.
