Marijuana politics in NJ, PA & the U.S.

Last month, JAY LASSITER of Cherry Hill, New Jersey, purchased the Garden State’s first legal medical marijuana from Greenleaf Compassion Center in Montclair, New Jersey. Battling HIV for two decades, the advocacy consultant and former BlueJersey.com blogger campaigned for years for legal access to the drug he credits with helping alleviate the appetite-suppressing side effects of medicine he needs to survive. One of his colleagues in the effort to legalize marijuana is CHRIS GOLDSTEIN, a member of the Board of Directors at PhillyNORML and an advocacy journalist who writes the Philadelphia Inquirer’s new “Philly420” column. Though Philly-area Democratic legislators Rep. Mark Cohen and Sen. Daylin Leach keep introducing bills to decriminalize marijuana in Pennsylvania, Gov. Tom Corbett has vowed to veto any such bill. We’ll hear from KEVIN SABET, former senior adviser to President Obama’s drug czar and director of the University of Florida’s Drug Policy Institute, about why the push toward legalization is the wrong public policy.

(AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, File)