Medical marijuana is on the move in the Mid-Atlantic region, as bills to legalize its use passed committee votes in Delaware Wednesday and New Jersey Thursday. The New Jersey bill is well-advanced, having already passed the state Senate, while in Delaware, Wednesday's vote was the first test of legislative sentiment.

In New Jersey, the Assembly Health Committee passed the bill, the New Jersey Compassionate Use Medical Marijuana Act, on a 7-1 vote, but only after making it dramatically different from and more restrictive than the version passed by the Senate. At the behest of committee chair Herb Conaway (D-Burlington), who was responding to criticism that the bill's distribution and oversight provisions weren't tight enough, the bill was amended so that only "alternative treatment centers" could grow, process, and distribute medical marijuana.

In the version passed by the Senate, patients could also grow their own or have caretakers grow it for them. In this latest version, there is no role for caretakers, because it also provides that only patients may pick up medical marijuana at a dispensary, or have a courier deliver it to them.

"This bill will be the most restrictive in the nation,'' said Sen. Joseph Scutari (D-Union), the bill's original sponsor. The bill may be too restrictive, he added.

The bill now heads for a floor vote in the Assembly. It also must go back to the Senate, which must approve the amended version.

One day earlier and one state to the south, the Delaware Senate Health and Social Services Committee approved Senate Bill 94, the Delaware Medical Marijuana Act, authored by Sen. Margaret Rose Henry (D-Wilmington East), the committee chair.

That bill would allow people with serious diseases to use medical marijuana with their physician's approval. The bill sets up an ID card system and a dispensary network. Patients could also grow and possess their own medicine, up to 12 plants and six ounces.