Pubdate: Sun, 24 Feb 2013
Source: Keene Sentinel (NH)
Copyright: 2013 Keene Publishing Corporation.
Contact:  http://sentinelsource.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/223

NEW HAMPSHIRE'S WELL-CRAFTED MEDICAL MARIJUANA PROPOSAL IS PART OF A 
GROWING MOVEMENT

In recent years, 18 states have authorized the use of marijuana for 
medical purposes, principally for palliative care for dreadfully 
painful conditions, and nine more are now considering such a move. 
New Hampshire is in this latter group with House Bill 573, a piece of 
legislation that is carefully drawn and deserving of support.

The bill is similar in many ways to legislation that's become law in 
every other New England state: It calls for registration of patients 
and close monitoring of cultivation, requires that qualifying 
patients first try other forms of relief, and sets strict rules about 
the financial relationships between prescribing doctors and treatment 
centers. The language of the bill runs close to 30 pages, and is 
vastly more detailed than the first such legalization in the land, in 
California in 1996; the law there is so spare and open-ended that the 
number of medical marijuana users is unknown, but is believed to 
exceed half a million people.

In New Hampshire, the most common guess is that 1,000 patients 
suffering from specific debilitating illnesses would register for 
medical marijuana treatment, a number that is roughly in line with 
the experience in Vermont, a smaller state that reports about 650 
such patients.

And, as noted, the proposed New Hampshire law would closely regulate 
the prescribing patterns of doctors to avoid situations that have 
cropped up in some other states, including Oregon where a recent 
newspaper report turned up a prescribing doctor who saw up to 80 
patients a day. (The doctor conceded to the Oregonian newspaper that 
his schedule was "absolutely asinine.")

House Bill 573 also limits the number of treatment centers to five, 
and allows patients to cultivate a limited supply of marijuana under 
controlled conditions. Caregivers would have to pass criminal 
background checks.

For all the recent experience nationally with medical marijuana, 
little is sure about its social impacts. Regarding crime, for 
example, one can find conflicting studies about whether crime goes up 
or down when medical marijuana is legal, but, in this region at least 
- - in Maine (which first authorized medical marijuana in 1999) and 
Vermont (2004) - there doesn't appear to be evidence of increased lawlessness.

To be sure, medical marijuana is a complex issue. For one, federal 
law continues to treat marijuana as a controlled drug, a fact that 
former Gov. John Lynch cited as his main reason for vetoing medical 
marijuana bills as recently as last year. And, in some eyes, medical 
marijuana authorization is just a back-door approach to full decriminalization.

We disagree with the latter proposition; full legalization is a 
separate matter. As for Lynch's rationale, we place value on Barack 
Obama's statement that he's open to the idea of medical marijuana so 
long as there are strict guidelines, and also pledges by Lynch 
successor Maggie Hassan that, while she has concerns about patients 
growing their own crops, she supports the principle of legalizing 
marijuana for the relief of pain and suffering.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom