Don't accept the bullshit. The bill doesn't legalize "under-age use" (but the kids can still go die in the regime's undeclared elective wars of empire, and everybody's in agreement they can easily get it now, so...) nor "DUI" by anybody, nor does it somehow empower black markets (which are caused by fiat prohibitions of market-demanded goods and services, y'see -- and the passage of the 21st Amendment, repealing the delegated authority for the only nominally lawful, if nevertheless also foolish, substance prohibition in this country, is proof that we'd actually learned that painful lesson once upon a time). The "gateway effect" is but a gateway to that thus-enabled black market, and thereby prohibition, if we're being, y'know, honest, undermines itself. Indeed, the "forbidden fruit effect" is suggesting that youth use goes down when adults manage to regain their rights from servant governments operating entirely above their delegated pay grade. Despite so much prohibition surrounding their production for so long, too, the growing statistics simply don't support the hysterically prophesied increases in all manner of terrible things (like, say, overdose deaths). But even if they did, liberty, however, does support -- does demand -- respect for self-ownership. And ostensibly, this society was founded on respecting and protecting such individual liberty.
And contrary to the up-ended, progress-oppositional "conservatism" message of the defiantly entrenched self-ownership-averse prohibitionists, "Live free or die" NH's recalcitrant "servant" government has had many opportunities to "lead" on this issue in an actually productive and liberty-friendly manner, to simply accept the demonstrated will of their employers, the people, now approaching three-quarters of whom want an end to this madness (but whom do they think they are, right?). Starting just in the last decade, we've seen 2008's HB1567, or 2010's HB1652 (video here and here), or 2012's HB1705 (video here and here), or 2013's HB337 (video here and here), or 2014's HB492 (video here and here and here and here and here), or 2016's HB1610, HB1694 or HB1675, or 2018's HB656 (video here and here and here) or SB233 (video here), or 2019's still-to-come companion HB722.
The People -- the boss in this here shop, and overwhelmingly in favor of ending this unauthorized and horrifically expensive (in blood, treasure and liberty) social-engineering experiment -- have been trying to lead their government, their servants, but have ultimately met defiant resistance at every turn.
While with the aforementioned HB492, the NH House became, in point of fact, the first legislative body in the country to approve the end of cannabis prohibition, sadly our "Democratic" governor at the time preferred conservative reactionism and the status quo to "leading". And the oligarchs in the NH Senate were more than happy to have her back in the unauthorized-to-them-to-begin-with "War on People Who Use (Some) Drugs"™. And so today NH is an island of prohibition in the northeast, entirely surrounded by the more enlightened, more liberty-friendly, more responsive, more obedient jurisdictions of Maine, Massachusetts, Vermont and Canada. Yep. Mighty proud...
So. This day, 2/5/2019, the NH House Criminal Justice Committee gets its latest shot at restoring some semblance of limited government (it's bad enough that we're looking at yet another over-regulated government monopoly rather than true free-market competition, the unique driving metric of which is satisfying customers, rather than cronies), with HB481, "relative to the legalization and regulation of cannabis and making appropriations therefor" (which nonsense title is the type that prompted the absurdist question posed in a previous post, "how much will ending prohibition cost?" -- 'cuz simply stopping what you're not allowed to do in the first place shouldn't cost anything!).
The legislative-majority Democrats now actually have "legalization" in their platform -- what took so long, "liberals"? -- but now we have a GOP governor obsessed with placating the (also servant, if we really need the reminder) police state and "Incarceration Nation". So keep your cards and letters and phone calls coming, free people -- both to your "representatives", such as they are, and to the corner office...
Press
- Governor’s commission on alcohol and drugs against N.H. pot legalization - 1/25/2019
- Will NH legalize recreational marijuana use? - 2/3/2019
- Marijuana legalization showdown in N.H. State House Tuesday - 2/5/2019
- Big Turnout For Bill To Legalize Marijuana in New Hampshire - InDepthNH.org - 2/5/2019
- Hearing on latest bill to legalize pot marked by passionate debate | Crime | unionleader.com - 2/5/2019
- NH lawmakers hear arguments for, against legalizing recreational marijuana - 2/5/2019
- New Hampshire’s opioid crisis looms over marijuana legalization debate - The Boston Globe - 2/5/2019
- CCC chair "comfortable" with [MA] banking, retail progress - News - MetroWest Daily News, Framingham, MA - 2/7/2019
- Dave Solomon's State House Dome: A decade of efforts to legalize pot | Statehouse Dome | unionleader.com - 2/9/2019
- CloseUp: The debate over legalizing marijuana in NH - 2/10/2019
- With Marijuana Legalization Across All Borders, What Does It Mean For N.H.? | New Hampshire Public Radio - 2/12/2019
- Legalize Pot? Amid Opioid Crisis, Some New Hampshire Leaders Say No Way - The New York Times - 2/20/2019
- House Panel Recommends Passing Bill To Legalize Marijuana Use - InDepthNH.org - 2/21/2019
- House committee endorses bill to legalize recreational cannabis | Crime | unionleader.com - 2/21/2019
- My Turn: No proof of causation in anti-pot column - 2/25/2019
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