A bill to legalize medical marijuana for debilitating conditions, including cancer, recently passed the New Hampshire House and Senate. If the House approves the Senate’s modifications and Governor John Lynch ratifies the bill, New Hampshire will become the fourteenth state to permit medical marijuana use.

Representative Evalyn Merrick, D-Lancaster, who suffers from multiple myeloma, sponsored the current bill. She explained that she smoked marijuana to combat nausea during her cancer treatments several years ago.

“I ask you to please look beyond your notion of what marijuana stands for and see what it offers our most vulnerable and suffering citizens,” she urged her fellow representatives during the bill’s passage.

The current bill (HB 648) permits patients and their designated caregivers, with physician approval, to possess up to six plants and up to two ounces of marijuana for limited periods of time. Patients must be suffering from a debilitating disease or treatment to become eligible. The law would prohibit any marijuana sale, but registered patients could grow their own marijuana or obtain it as a gift from another eligible patient.

Of the states that have already legalized marijuana use, “[n]one has found increased abuse, increased crime or any of the myriad social ills or law enforcement nightmares so often feared,” explained Senator Peggy Gilmour, D-Nashua.

However, some opponents feared that legalizing medical marijuana could encourage addiction or wider social use. “Medical use is a Trojan horse to ultimately legalize marijuana. It’s a front, a first step to widespread legislation,” stated Representative John Cebrowski, R-Bedford.

Other legislators, while not necessarily objecting to medical marijuana in principle, faulted the legislation as untenable. Representative Peter Batula, R-Merrimack, emphasized, “If you can’t buy [marijuana], can’t sell it, and the physician can’t prescribe it, where do you get it?”

A spokesman for Governor Lynch, who possesses the ultimate decision of whether to sign the bill into law, said the governor has concerns about the bill but has not yet reviewed it. Similar medical marijuana legislation is also pending in eight other states.

Currently, even when states legalize medical marijuana, it remains illegal under federal law. Federal law enforcement officials may therefore arrest individuals possessing marijuana. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, however, has announced that the federal government will no longer raid marijuana distributors or arrest users that are abiding by state law.

For more information, please see the New Hampshire medical marijuana bill under consideration, HB 648.