My testimony on HB 442, New Hampshire's Medical Marijuana Bill

Thank you Mr. Chairman. Good Morning ladies and gentlemen of the committee. For the record my name is Nick Murray and I am a third-year political science student at UNH. I serve an active role in NORML and Young Americans for Liberty on campus, two political advocacy student organizations. I testify today as a student and a graduate of the D.A.R.E. drug education program. 

As a student, I've seen how punitive punishments for cannabis can damage a student's future, especially at UNH.

The arguments against passing a medical marijuana law are usually founded on society’s desire to protect young people from exposure to cannabis. In the real world, these laws have never stopped people from smoking this controversial plant, even with an astonishing 880,000 marijuana arrests now being made per year in the United States. Despite decades of prohibition, marijuana use today is viewed by young people as being more normal than ever, and the majority of young people have accurately concluded that cannabis is a safer drug than alcohol, let alone morphine or oxycodone. All the statistics suggest this is the case, but those are not the facts that I or my peers were taught in the DARE program.

High school and university students of today are the DARE generation, yet we see and use drugs as much as our contemporaries 20, 30 and 40 years before us. Our current cannabis laws are supposed to protect youth, but they have not been effective in doing so – they have only driven the business underground. High-schoolers today say that it is easier to purchase marijuana than alcohol, a direct result of marijuana prohibition. Add in deliberately misleading and ineffective programs aimed at frightening children instead of telling the whole story and we've effectively left generations of youth without the knowledge to live in a world where drugs exist. It is a shame that various levels of government have refused to correct this blatant social discrepancy.

Government’s regulation of potentially harmful substances has never meant an endorsement of their use. Take alcohol and cigarettes, two of the most dangerous drugs in our world. We, as a society recognize that these behaviors are meant for adults and not children, yet they are fully legal for adults.

Any future regulatory scheme for dispensing cannabis would surely include age restrictions and quality control provisions present in legal drug dispensaries like New Hampshire’s State Liquor Stores. Prohibition does not guarantee these essential precautions, in fact it directly conflicts with consumer safety. Indeed, a legal market would be best for patients, but guaranteeing safe access to medicine and protection from arrest and prosecution is the baseline moral standard for this body to set for terminally-ill Granite Staters. HB 442 would establish that standard; I urge you to support this legislation.

Thank you.