Chris Christie agrees to ease access to medical marijuana for sick kids

GlobalPost

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie agreed Friday to sign a bill giving chronically ill children easier access to medical marijuana if two minor changes are made.

Christie conditionally vetoed the bill as it was written.

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But he said he would sign the legislation if it made edible medical marijuana available to qualified minors only, and a doctor and a psychiatrist were required to sign off on a child's prescription.

It wasn't immediately clear if those changes would be made.

New Jersey's legislature could take up the bill during a voting session scheduled on Monday.

Like other states that have legalized medical marijuana, New Jersey already allows children to use the drug for medical conditions. But the regulations in place there make it difficult to obtain, and parents of children with severe seizure disorders pushed for the new legislation to give them easier access to the drug.

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On Thursday, Christie was publicly confronted by one of those parents during a campaign stop at a diner in Scotch Plains, where Brian Wilson pleaded with him, "Don't let my daughter die."

Wilson's 2-year-old daughter suffers from a severe form of epilepsy known as Dravet Syndrome that has been shown to improve dramatically with the use of a non-psychoactive form of medical marijuana.

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