(USA Today) The New Hampshire Legislature has passed legislation allowing chronically ill patients to use medical marijuana with a doctor’s prescription.
Gov. John Lynch, a Democrat, said he would study the bill before deciding whether to sign or veto it. He has raised concerns about preventing marijuana cultivation and distribution. The bill prohibits users or caregivers from growing the plant, which would be dispensed in licensed “compassion centers.”
If the law is enacted, the Granite State would become the 14th state allowing medical marijuana and the fourth state to license dispensaries.
Gov. Lynch, if you sign this bill, it will still be the most restrictive medical marijuana law of the fourteen states that allow it – the first to not allow patients to grow their own, locking them into a state monopoly where they must pay black market prices in a dispensary. Somehow neighboring Vermont, Maine, and nearby Rhode Island have allowed patients to cultivate at home and the world didn’t come to an end. Rhode Island even enacted dispensary legislation this year without eliminating the right to grow.
When/if this is signed into law, you can bet every new medical marijuana bill and initiative introduced will duplicate the “no home growing / state-monopolized non-profit dispensary” system. The prohibitionists have realized they cannot defeat medical marijuana, so their tactic now is to force the “medical” part into the strictly-controlled pharmaceutical system we use for dangerous drugs like Oxycontin.
While I’m glad to see seriously ill and disabled Granite Staters gain access to cannabis for medical use, I fear the precedent being set that marijuana is such a dangerous medicine that it must be controlled like an opiate and that those of us who use cannabis socially are akin to illicit prescription drug abusers.
…And give that constitution to gov. Lynch today too. He justrejected the bill!
Our state has overcrowded prisons and a huge budget deficit that we need to deal with lets keep the rightwingers and fundamentalists happy be keeping up prohibition.
I hope gov Lynch at least has enough compassion to overlook his laws when he finds a poor cancel patient trying to illegally use a little herb so she can keep her lunch down.
Appeal to your Senator and your Representatives to overide the veto. And don’t forget to support our state’s tax base by buying a few litters of good hard liquor when you pass by the state’s liquor store on the side of the highway. A good legal buzz is a horrible thing to waste.
Da Vinci it’s pronounced ‘Live,Freeze,then Die’
Iza Grewa hup theyah..an lifes difrent…
those poor poor hurting people will now b forced into a dispensary…like a state liqour store…mmmmm….I wonder….
seems there is very little ‘FREE’ left in…
the ‘ol granite state
1/8 in NH I’ve seen as high as $80.
“Live Free or Die” lol, yah right. Govt Hypocrisy in action. Someone needs to give Gov. Lynch a copy of the NH Constitution.