Pretty huge, imo:CONCORD - Chronically and terminally ill patients would be able to use marijuana to ease their pain under a bill the Senate passed yesterday.
By a 14-10 vote, the Senate approved House Bill 648, which allows patients with approval from both their doctors and the state to have up to two ounces and six plants of marijuana. The law allows a patient to designate one caregiver to grow or possess marijuana for them. They can also obtain the drug from another certified patient.
The bill also sets up a commission to study whether the state should create a system for distributing medicinal marijuana, and the issues that state involvement would raise. I have a personal preference to keep my mind as free from control as possible from chemicals, and an almost Nancy Reagan-esque intolerance for illegal drugs.
But I've also seen the inside of a chemotherapy ward. Doing what we can to relieve pain for the chronically or terminally ill is no-brainer.
And as for that other "other" bill, on transgender discrimination, I'm sorry that, with the notable exception of Terie Norelli, John H. Sununu's fraudulent "bathroom" garbage rhetoric was allowed to go unchallenged prior to the vote, and that one of the most vulnerable constituencies in society will continue to be so.
This, though, after the fact, is encouraging: Co-sponsor Sen. Martha Fuller Clark, D-Portsmouth, said opponents "shamefully sought to distract us from the real issue of discrimination and violence, bringing the debate literally to the toilet."
..."Shame on you," said Sen. Jacalyn Cilley, D-Barrington, as she accused opponents of "political posturing and gamesmanship." |
