Gov. Phil Murphy’s proposed medical marijuana expansion is “just a back door way” into legalization, one of the state Legislature’s top Democrats told reporters on Friday — a day after the governor said he would give lawmakers until May to pass a legal recreational marijuana bill before resuming an expansion to the medicinal program.

“An expansion of medical is just a back door way to getting to adult-use, which is what California did,” Senate President Stephen Sweeney, D-3rd District, told reporters at an unrelated event in Monroe Friday morning.

On Thursday, Murphy said his administration would not “wait around a lot longer” for lawmakers to come up with the votes necessary to approve the legal recreational marijuana bill and send the measure to his desk. His proposals would ramp up the existing medical marijuana program — in which six dispensaries serve roughly 45,000 patients — so that it could accommodate an additional 200,000 people.

Lawmakers cancelled a vote for adult-use cannabis on Monday after the measure failed to get enough votes in the Senate to make it pass the 21-member threshold. Although the state Assembly had the votes, Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin, D-19th District, said he would not schedule the legal cannabis bill for a vote without the Senate.