In a 14-10 vote, the New Hampshire state senate today passed a bill to permit chronically ill patients with a doctor's prescription to produce and consume small amounts of marijuana for therapeutic or palliative purposes. Though Democrats control the state senate by a 14-10 margin, according to a listener on the audio feed the bill was not quite party-line; one Democratic state senator voted against it, while one Republican state senator voted for it.
The bill did include an amendment to the earlier House version to add further controls on the production of the plant and has been sent back to the state house of representatives. If the amended bill is adopted by the house without further amendment, it will pass to Governor John Lynch, who has made cautious statements objecting to some elements of the bill but supporting the overall objective of providing sick people with the most effective treatment available. It is not certain whether he would sign the bill, veto the bill, or permit it to become law without his signature, but it would be a surprisingly unusual move for him to veto a bill without having made substantial opposition to it while it was still in the legislative process.
If passed, New Hampshire would join the growing ranks of states across the country that have made allowances for marijuana use (under medical supervision or not). As such, this would bring New Hampshire under the aegis of President Obama's recent notice that the federal government would not attempt to pursue federal marijuana charges against citizens acting in accord with state legislation on usage. With passage, New Hampshire will be the 14th state to in some way legalize medical marijuana use; nearly a third of the states will have accepted that there are medically sound reasons to use cannabis.
While I am not myself a smoker of any substances, nor prone to alcohol use, I am strongly in favor of medical marijuana legalization. I know too many people who have or are genetically predisposed to cancer to be unwilling to see a theraputic or palliative treatment made available. I am also inclined to for broader reasons legalize cannabis in general, not least because it would then deny illicit funding to criminal organizations that are currently making a large portion of their operating expenses smuggling it.