We can hear the taunting from clear across the country already: “Hey California — we got your medical marijuana right here!” That's right, they do. While the city of Los Angeles is grappling with its burgeoning pot-shop trade and some pot boosters are gathering signatures to make pot fully legal in California — doctors' recommendations be damned — the New Jersey state assembly and senate have approved medical-marijuana language, giving new meaning to the term “Garden State.”

After passage by the assembly today 48-16 with one abstention, the proposed law just needs one additional green light by the state's senate and it's on the books. And unlike California's loose-ended mess, largely manifest in the pot-shop capital of the nation, L.A., Jersey's law appears to be aiming for a tight bogarting of its medical weed scene.

New Jersey's legislation would only allow six publicly operated dispensaries throughout the state; it will prohibit patients from growing weed themselves; it will limit the kinds of ailments that will make someone qualified to get the pot; and it will limit patients to two ounces per month.

This is a good thing. Because the last thing the world needs is more impaired, spiky-haired beef-cakes (and notice, out of consideration for our Italian-American brethren, that we did not use the “g”-word here). Ohhhh.

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