[420 Girl]

There was a repeat in Trenton the other day of the kind of compelling testimony that accompanied the state Senate's approval of a medical marijuana bill. But the bill is now before the Assembly, and one of its advocates is from nearby Cumberland County.

It's almost embarrassing that 54-year-old Jack O'Brien of Commercial Township felt the need to describe himself as "... not a pot-head, ... not a partier" before the Assembly Health and Human Services Committee in his quest to get New Jersey to let him have legally the pain medication he says he needs.

O'Brien, who has a birth defect that left him with nerve pain and without fingers or toes, has other options to control his pain. But he worries over long-term use of stronger-but-legal medications, because of side effects and risks of internal organ damage. Marijuana, he notes, works without making him feel lethargic.

"I need to live a quality of life that's better than (just) laying on the couch," he added.

Words like O'Brien's are the reason the Assembly panel released the bill in an 8-1 vote, with two abstentions. And they're the reason the full Assembly should concur with the Senate and make New Jersey the 14th state that decriminalizes marijuana for medical reasons.

Not to minimize the concerns of some law enforcement officials over legal access, but the newest Assembly amendments put even more distance between New Jersey's plans and the joke of a law in California which allows "entrepreneurs" to set up pot shops that have sprung up like weed(s), and lets users concoct suspect health conditions to buy the stuff.

The Assembly panel removed language allowing medical users to grow up to six plants at home. Frankly, that provision shouldn't have been a worry, since no one will be able to possess marijuana legally unless they get a doctor's recommendation and special registration card issued by the Department of Human Services.

Under the new version, legal users basically would have to get marijuana from one of several "alternative treatment centers" statewide. That's a lot of hurdles to get some pot. O'Brien and many others would likely negotiate the hurdles willingly, if it meant the drug they need is legal, just like now-legal narcotic painkillers that are more addictive, and also widely abused.

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