Pubdate: Wed, 11 Feb 2009
Source: Telegraph, The (Nashua, NH)
Copyright: 2009 Telegraph Publishing Company
Contact:  http://www.nashuatelegraph.com
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/885
Author: Lauren R. Dorgan
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mmj.htm (Cannabis - Medicinal)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/decrim.htm (Decrim/Legalization)

FOR LANCASTER LAWMAKER, MARIJUANA LEGISLATION A PERSONAL FIGHT

Suffering from cancer of the blood and bones and from debilitating 
chemotherapy that readied her for a bone marrow transplant, Evalyn 
Merrick came home from the hospital in 2002 to a simpler problem: She 
couldn't eat.

Drinking water was painful, remembers Merrick, now a Democratic state 
representative from Lancaster. Persistent nausea made eating solid 
food impossible. She doesn't remember much - was it yogurt that she 
tried to eat? Did the foodless stretch last a week, or more? - but 
she does remember fear.

"It was scary, because when I had the strength to stand up and look 
at myself in the mirror, I looked like somebody out of Auschwitz," 
Merrick said.

A friend suggested she try smoking marijuana to calm her body. She 
did - just one puff, she said. Then, she asked her husband for a 
drink of nut brown beer. He bought some, she said, and poured it into 
a tiny glass.

"And it stayed down, and it felt good," Merrick said. "It was the 
first time that I had some kind of relief to my system."

It was illegal. But to her mind, it was a medical necessity.

Now, Merrick is the prime sponsor of a bill that would make it legal 
under New Hampshire law for seriously ill patients to take marijuana 
by prescription. A dozen other states permit medical marijuana, 
including Vermont.

"In a nutshell, the intent of this bill is to provide physical and 
mental relief from debilitating (diseases) and protect seriously ill 
patients from arrest and jail," Merrick said.

Merrick's bill, House Bill 648, would allow doctors to prescribe 
marijuana to patients suffering from a "debilitating medical 
condition," such as cancer or HIV, and they would be allowed to keep 
the plants and a few ounces of marijuana.

Patients would be registered with the state. Her latest amendment, 
she said, would allow each patient to keep a maximum of six plants 
and 2 ounces of the drug.

Merrick has spent a lot of time writing and rewriting the bill - she 
wants it to be tightly crafted because she wants to leave "no wiggle 
room" for her bill to be interpreted as a step toward decriminalization.

A hearing date for the bill has not yet been set.

Meanwhile, Merrick continues to undergo treatments for her own 
multiple myeloma, a cancer that has caused tumors on her bones. She 
says, evenly, there is "no cure for it. So I keep using what's 
available, and thank God for modern medicine and research."

A quick-to-smile Long Island native who supported her husband, Rick, 
through medical school and became a fitness instructor so she would 
have time to raise her two children, Merrick is far from a lifelong 
politician. Asked why she ran for the House, she talks about 
inequities in the health care system, seeing local fundraisers to 
help pay for a transplant - a $1,000 dance to help pay for a half 
million-dollar procedure.

"It's not right," she said.

So she ran for the House in 2006 on the suggestion of her son, Scott 
Merrick, who was already a Democratic state representative 
inaugurated as a 19-year-old college student. Evalyn Merrick went 
doo-to-door throughout her Coos County district, hearing stories of 
lost jobs and lost health care.

Scott Merrick, now 23 and in his third term as representative, says 
that he was essentially returning the favor. "She and my dad are the 
reason I got involved in politics," he said. "So I guess it kind of 
goes around."

In 2007, as a freshman legislator, Evalyn Merrick championed a 
medical marijuana bill on the House floor that narrowly failed by nine votes.

"That's incredible," Scott Merrick said. "That takes a lot of guts."

But Evalyn Merrick said it wasn't that hard. "I wasn't nervous," she 
said. "I felt compelled to speak out because I could identify with 
the suffering."

The New Hampshire Medical Society isn't taking a position on 
Merrick's medical marijuana bill, said Janet Monahan, the group's 
deputy executive vice president, who says she will be monitoring the bill.

Because marijuana is not approved by the Food and Drug Administration 
and doesn't come in a regular form, it's hard for the medical 
association to support it, Monahan said, because doctors don't always 
know exactly what they're prescribing.

Marijuana's active components, cannabinoids, "do have medical 
benefits," said Seddon Savage, a doctor who specializes in addiction 
medicine and pain medication and who sits on the board of the New 
Hampshire Medical Society. Cannabinoids have been studied for use as 
treatments for pain, nausea and lack of appetite, she said.

While drug companies have tried to incorporate synthetic cannabinoids 
into medicines, so far the drugs available in the United States have 
not been as "bioavailable," and therefore as effective, as smoked 
marijuana has, Savage said.

"One of the problems with the currently available cannabinoids is . . 
. they don't have all the constituents that smoked marijuana has," Savage said.

But Savage has her eye on a new cannabinoid drug, Sativex, an oral 
spray recently approved in Canada and is in the trial phase with the 
FDA, and which she said has proven to be an "excellent pain drug."

Savage, who is not taking a position on medical marijuana, notes that 
the act of smoking comes with harmful side effects. And she adds that 
the lack of a regularized form of marijuana makes it hard for 
physicians to prescribe.

"In general, in medicine, we like to have some level of certainty 
about what it is we're actually providing patients," she said.

To Rep. Jim Pilliod, a pediatrician and a Republican co-sponsor of 
Merrick's bill, marijuana is a "very mild, controlled substance" 
compared to other drugs that are regularly prescribed, such as 
codeine or morphine derivatives.

Pilliod said he's seen two terminally ill friends turn to marijuana 
to ease end-of-life pain. In one case, "it made her able to talk to 
people, able to stay awake," while other pain medications failed.

"I could have ordered narcotics for them, but they'd tried that and 
it didn't work," he said.

National medical organizations have not entirely agreed on medical marijuana.

The American Medical Association has been studying the 
medical-marijuana issue for years, according to its website.

The American College of Physicians, which represents doctors of 
internal medicine, made headlines last year by calling for the 
government to let up on its ban on medical marijuana and to allow 
more marijuana research.

The report concludes: "Evidence not only supports the use of medical 
marijuana in certain conditions but also suggests numerous 
indications for cannabinoids. Additional research is needed to 
further clarify the therapeutic value of cannabinoids and determine 
optimal routes of administration. The science on medical marijuana 
should not be obscured or hindered by the debate surrounding the 
legalization of marijuana for general use."

Legislative outlook

Last year, the New Hampshire House took a surprising step on 
marijuana policy: Lawmakers voted by a wide margin in favor of a bill 
that would broadly decriminalize possession of small amounts of the 
drug. That bill would have made a dollar fine the only penalty for 
possession of one-quarter ounce or less.

Gov. John Lynch swiftly threatened to veto that bill, which garnered 
no support in the Senate and died there.

This year, Matt Simon, the executive director of the New Hampshire 
Coalition for Common Sense Marijuana Policy, calls medical marijuana 
his group's top priority for the year.

"I think the Legislature is ready to pass a medical marijuana law,"

Simon said, a change he sees as a "moral imperative."

He points to the fact that two senators - Democrat Martha Fuller 
Clark and Republican John Gallus - have signed on as co-sponsors of 
Merrick's bill.

To Simon, broad decriminalization and medical marijuana are "very 
different issues." Medical marijuana, to his eyes, has wider support 
and fewer detractors.

His group touts a survey showing lopsided support of legalizing 
medical marijuana in New Hampshire: 71 percent favored and 21 
opposed, according to a poll conducted by Mason-Dixon Polling and 
Research in April 2008.

The survey had a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percent.

His group has set up a website, NHCompassion.org, that features the 
stories and pictures of five New Hampshire residents who've suffered 
from conditions such as multiple sclerosis and cancer and either used 
- - or wish they'd been able to use - marijuana.

But there are some overriding challenges to changing state marijuana 
laws. The biggest one: federal law. Nothing the New Hampshire 
Legislature does can override federal drug laws that make possessing 
marijuana illegal.

This makes medical marijuana distribution a real challenge.

Vermont, for example, has 126 registered medical marijuana patients 
and 24 registered caregivers, according to Sheri Englert, the 
marijuana registry coordinator. Their law requires a doctor to fill 
out a portion of the application, she said, and she then verifies it.

But there's no legal, sanctioned way for people to obtain marijuana in Vermont.

"The law just provides that they're just allowed to possess specific 
amounts of growing or usable marijuana," Englert says. "There's no 
provision in the law to allow me to make any recommendations or 
suggestions at all."

California, which has permitted medical marijuana for more than a 
decade, has seen federal agents routinely raiding medical 
state-sanctioned marijuana dispensaries over the years.

The U.S. Supreme Court in 2005 upheld the right of the federal 
government to enforce U.S. law prohibiting marijuana possession.

Merrick, in her bill, argues that state law changes can nonetheless 
be effective, noting that 99 percent of marijuana arrests come under 
state law, not federal law. So, the bill reads, "changing state law 
will have the practical effect of protecting from arrest the vast 
majority of seriously ill patients who have a medical need to use marijuana."

[Sidebar]

The Pot Debate((

How well is the legal crackdown on marijuana working: Is it a good 
way to reduce drug abuse, or a waste of money? These stories look at 
the issue, examining the opinions of those who make the law, those 
who enforce it, and those who run afoul of it.

Visit The Telegraph's Pot Debate page for an archive of all articles 
in this series.
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