Opioid addicts in New Jersey, no matter how they got hooked on the deadly drugs, including heroin and prescription painkillers, could soon be prescribed medical marijuana to help them kick their habit, under a new proposal from the state Health Department.
A rule change would make prescription marijuana available to potentially thousands of opioid abusers and bring Garden State policy in line with more liberal policy measures in place in neighboring and other states.
"Physicians should consider marijuana as another appropriate treatment for patients with many medical conditions, especially diseases for which conventional therapies aren’t working for their patients," Dr. Shereef Elnahal, the state health commissioner, said in a statement.
Under current guidelines, someone with an "opioid use disorder" is only eligible to receive a New Jersey medical marijuana card — essentially a state "permission slip" to use weed for medical reasons — if they became addicted to opioids while trying to manage chronic pain from a musculoskeletal disorder.
Pending final approval, individuals with opioid disorders could be prescribed medical marijuana without regard to how they arrived at their addiction.