The N.H. House of Representatives' Criminal Justice and Public Safety is scheduled on Tuesday, March 3 to consider House Bill 150, which would establish a study committee on the legalization of marijuana.
We urge committee members to give the bill, whose sponsors include state Rep. Robert “Renny” Cushing, D-Hampton, its full support.
Cushing’s bill recognizes the need to confront the growing sense that the penalties levied for possession of marijuana don’t justify, in many cases, the sentences meted out by our judicial system. As Cushing says, it’s ridiculous for the state to be spending $35,000 a year to put someone in jail for a small amount of marijuana.
He also calls it crazy that “New Hampshire spent $6.5 million last year trying to put people in jail for smoking marijuana.”
Without the study in hand, we won’t go that far. But we do have to believe there is substance to Cushing’s belief that “We have a lot of other important needs that aren’t being met because we are being diverted.”
HB150 also recognizes there is much that has clouded the debate since the federal government erroneously decided marijuana should be classified as a Schedule 1 drug, along with the likes of heroin, LSD and ecstasy.
But if that were not enough impetus here in New Hampshire for a thorough study, the growing trend across the country and in neighboring states should be. It is to either outright legalize the personal use of marijuana or at least decriminalize its use.
Here in New England, New Hampshire is the only state not to decriminalize simple possession of small quantities of marijuana. In Massachusetts, for example, possession of one ounce or less is a civil violation punishable by a $100 fine.
Colorado celebrated its first anniversary of legal recreational marijuana sales on Jan. 1. Washington State has allowed the sale of recreational weed since June 1, 2014. Oregon and Alaska will join them in 2016.
And right next door, a petition effort is being mounted that would ask Maine voters to legalize recreational marijuana in that state come 2016. That means marijuana could be legal in Kittery, while remaining illegal just a few hundred yards over the river in Portsmouth and the rest of New Hampshire.
So there is no misunderstanding, we are not advocating legalization, as is Cushing’s eventual hope. We are not looking to succumb to the pressure perhaps felt in other states. However, there is the need to address reality and to benefit from the experiences of other states.
We also cannot discount that history has shown marijuana not to be the “Devil’s Weed” that leads to “Reefer Madness.” To the contrary, marijuana — for medicinal use — is now legal in 23 states including New Hampshire, as well as the District of Columbia, according to http://medicalmarijuana.procon.org.
Beyond that, marijuana is no more intoxicating than hard liquor, beer or wine, all of which are big business and big revenue generators for the state. As we wrote in a Jan. 3, 2014 editorial: "Heck, the state has a monopoly on the liquor franchise and it would certainly benefit financially from taxing or perhaps even selling marijuana."
The argument that marijuana is bad for a smoker's health is undermined by the fact that sales of cigarettes and other tobacco products are legal even though, according to the World Health Organization, tobacco kills up to half of its users and, in the United States alone, 440,000 people die of smoking-related illnesses each year.
All this adds up to the need to take a close, hard look at our laws concerning marijuana and to finally put them in perspective.
We think HB150 takes an important step in that direction.
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