FOR LANCASTER LAWMAKER, MARIJUANA LEGISLATION A PERSONAL FIGHT

Suffering from cancer of the blood and bones and from debilitating
chemotherapy that readied her for a bone marrow transplant, Evalyn
Merrick came home from the hospital in 2002 to a simpler problem: She
couldn't eat.

Drinking water was painful, remembers Merrick, now a Democratic state
representative from Lancaster. Persistent nausea made eating solid
food impossible. She doesn't remember much - was it yogurt that she
tried to eat? Did the foodless stretch last a week, or more? - but
she does remember fear.

"It was scary, because when I had the strength to stand up and look
at myself in the mirror, I looked like somebody out of Auschwitz,"
Merrick said.

A friend suggested she try smoking marijuana to calm her body. She
did - just one puff, she said. Then, she asked her husband for a
drink of nut brown beer. He bought some, she said, and poured it into
a tiny glass.

"And it stayed down, and it felt good," Merrick said. "It was the
first time that I had some kind of relief to my system."

It was illegal. But to her mind, it was a medical necessity.

Now, Merrick is the prime sponsor of a bill that would make it legal
under New Hampshire law for seriously ill patients to take marijuana
by prescription. A dozen other states permit medical marijuana,
including Vermont.

"In a nutshell, the intent of this bill is to provide physical and
mental relief from debilitating (diseases) and protect seriously ill
patients from arrest and jail," Merrick said.

Merrick's bill, House Bill 648, would allow doctors to prescribe
marijuana to patients suffering from a "debilitating medical
condition," such as cancer or HIV, and they would be allowed to keep
the plants and a few ounces of marijuana.

Patients would be registered with the state. Her latest amendment,
she said, would allow each patient to keep a maximum of six plants
and 2 ounces of the drug.

Merrick has spent a lot of time writing and rewriting the bill - she
wants it to be tightly crafted because she wants to leave "no wiggle
room" for her bill to be interpreted as a step toward decriminalization.

A hearing date for the bill has not yet been set.

Meanwhile, Merrick continues to undergo treatments for her own
multiple myeloma, a cancer that has caused tumors on her bones. She
says, evenly, there is "no cure for it. So I keep using what's
available, and thank God for modern medicine and research."

A quick-to-smile Long Island native who supported her husband, Rick,
through medical school and became a fitness instructor so she would
have time to raise her two children, Merrick is far from a lifelong
politician. Asked why she ran for the House, she talks about
inequities in the health care system, seeing local fundraisers to
help pay for a transplant - a $1,000 dance to help pay for a half
million-dollar procedure.

"It's not right," she said.

So she ran for the House in 2006 on the suggestion of her son, Scott
Merrick, who was already a Democratic state representative
inaugurated as a 19-year-old college student. Evalyn Merrick went
doo-to-door throughout her Coos County district, hearing stories of
lost jobs and lost health care.

Scott Merrick, now 23 and in his third term as representative, says
that he was essentially returning the favor. "She and my dad are the
reason I got involved in politics," he said. "So I guess it kind of
goes around."

In 2007, as a freshman legislator, Evalyn Merrick championed a
medical marijuana bill on the House floor that narrowly failed by nine votes.

"That's incredible," Scott Merrick said. "That takes a lot of guts."

But Evalyn Merrick said it wasn't that hard. "I wasn't nervous," she
said. "I felt compelled to speak out because I could identify with
the suffering."

The New Hampshire Medical Society isn't taking a position on
Merrick's medical marijuana bill, said Janet Monahan, the group's
deputy executive vice president, who says she will be monitoring the bill.

Because marijuana is not approved by the Food and Drug Administration
and doesn't come in a regular form, it's hard for the medical
association to support it, Monahan said, because doctors don't always
know exactly what they're prescribing.

Marijuana's active components, cannabinoids, "do have medical
benefits," said Seddon Savage, a doctor who specializes in addiction
medicine and pain medication and who sits on the board of the New
Hampshire Medical Society. Cannabinoids have been studied for use as
treatments for pain, nausea and lack of appetite, she said.

While drug companies have tried to incorporate synthetic cannabinoids
into medicines, so far the drugs available in the United States have
not been as "bioavailable," and therefore as effective, as smoked
marijuana has, Savage said.

"One of the problems with the currently available cannabinoids is . .
. they don't have all the constituents that smoked marijuana has," Savage said.

But Savage has her eye on a new cannabinoid drug, Sativex, an oral
spray recently approved in Canada and is in the trial phase with the
FDA, and which she said has proven to be an "excellent pain drug."

Savage, who is not taking a position on medical marijuana, notes that
the act of smoking comes with harmful side effects. And she adds that
the lack of a regularized form of marijuana makes it hard for
physicians to prescribe.

"In general, in medicine, we like to have some level of certainty
about what it is we're actually providing patients," she said.

To Rep. Jim Pilliod, a pediatrician and a Republican co-sponsor of
Merrick's bill, marijuana is a "very mild, controlled substance"
compared to other drugs that are regularly prescribed, such as
codeine or morphine derivatives.

Pilliod said he's seen two terminally ill friends turn to marijuana
to ease end-of-life pain. In one case, "it made her able to talk to
people, able to stay awake," while other pain medications failed.

"I could have ordered narcotics for them, but they'd tried that and
it didn't work," he said.

National medical organizations have not entirely agreed on medical marijuana.

The American Medical Association has been studying the
medical-marijuana issue for years, according to its website.

The American College of Physicians, which represents doctors of
internal medicine, made headlines last year by calling for the
government to let up on its ban on medical marijuana and to allow
more marijuana research.

The report concludes: "Evidence not only supports the use of medical
marijuana in certain conditions but also suggests numerous
indications for cannabinoids. Additional research is needed to
further clarify the therapeutic value of cannabinoids and determine
optimal routes of administration. The science on medical marijuana
should not be obscured or hindered by the debate surrounding the
legalization of marijuana for general use."

Legislative outlook

Last year, the New Hampshire House took a surprising step on
marijuana policy: Lawmakers voted by a wide margin in favor of a bill
that would broadly decriminalize possession of small amounts of the
drug. That bill would have made a dollar fine the only penalty for
possession of one-quarter ounce or less.

Gov. John Lynch swiftly threatened to veto that bill, which garnered
no support in the Senate and died there.

This year, Matt Simon, the executive director of the New Hampshire
Coalition for Common Sense Marijuana Policy, calls medical marijuana
his group's top priority for the year.

"I think the Legislature is ready to pass a medical marijuana law,"

Simon said, a change he sees as a "moral imperative."

He points to the fact that two senators - Democrat Martha Fuller
Clark and Republican John Gallus - have signed on as co-sponsors of
Merrick's bill.

To Simon, broad decriminalization and medical marijuana are "very
different issues." Medical marijuana, to his eyes, has wider support
and fewer detractors.

His group touts a survey showing lopsided support of legalizing
medical marijuana in New Hampshire: 71 percent favored and 21
opposed, according to a poll conducted by Mason-Dixon Polling and
Research in April 2008.

The survey had a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percent.

His group has set up a website, NHCompassion.org, that features the
stories and pictures of five New Hampshire residents who've suffered
from conditions such as multiple sclerosis and cancer and either used
- - or wish they'd been able to use - marijuana.

But there are some overriding challenges to changing state marijuana
laws. The biggest one: federal law. Nothing the New Hampshire
Legislature does can override federal drug laws that make possessing
marijuana illegal.

This makes medical marijuana distribution a real challenge.

Vermont, for example, has 126 registered medical marijuana patients
and 24 registered caregivers, according to Sheri Englert, the
marijuana registry coordinator. Their law requires a doctor to fill
out a portion of the application, she said, and she then verifies it.

But there's no legal, sanctioned way for people to obtain marijuana in Vermont.

"The law just provides that they're just allowed to possess specific
amounts of growing or usable marijuana," Englert says. "There's no
provision in the law to allow me to make any recommendations or
suggestions at all."

California, which has permitted medical marijuana for more than a
decade, has seen federal agents routinely raiding medical
state-sanctioned marijuana dispensaries over the years.

The U.S. Supreme Court in 2005 upheld the right of the federal
government to enforce U.S. law prohibiting marijuana possession.

Merrick, in her bill, argues that state law changes can nonetheless
be effective, noting that 99 percent of marijuana arrests come under
state law, not federal law. So, the bill reads, "changing state law
will have the practical effect of protecting from arrest the vast
majority of seriously ill patients who have a medical need to use marijuana."

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