Smoking Weed With Dignity - Granite Grok

Smoking Weed With Dignity

Chuck Weed is back again to take another shot at the death with dignity bill.  This year it is called HB513 and according to this morning’s paper it is about to die without much dignity.  I think we can call that smoking Weed.  (Sorry medical marijuana advocates, this is not a story about pot.)

The last go around was HB 304, about which I said this back  in April of 2009.

I just read HB 304, "An act relative to death with dignity for certain persons suffering from a terminal condition."  It’s sponsored by Weed, Richardson, Watrous and Mitchell, and we’ve already got problems.  For starters Life is a terminal condition for which, by the way, there is no known treatment.  Yup.  Can’t deny it, but no reason to stop the government from getting involved.

I mention it because in the latest iteration "Terminal condition" has been replaced with "Terminal disease."  And ‘Terminal disease’ is not the sickness you get standing in line waiting to get groped by Atilla the TSA screener.  It is actually now defined as…"an incurable and irreversible disease that has been medically confirmed and will, within reasonable medical judgment produce death within 6 months."

So glad I could help out.  Of course even that change still leaves far too much to the imagination for my taste.

One feature of this years doomed version that remains from the previous is the declaration that 

The state of New Hampshire recognizes that persons have a right, founded in the autonomy of the person, to control the decisions relating to the rendering of their own medical care.

If we jump into Simon and Mr. Peabody’s Way-back machine again and set the dial for my September 2009 blog post…

…the same kind of people who were averse to HCR6 (protection of states rights) have written a bill with language that will prohibit  any federal  board or committee from making decisions about what treatments or diagnostics we have access to in the Granite State.  HB 304 states that we have a right to control those decisions.  So …, if the state wants to tell the federal government to kiss off on Health Care reform regulations that limit patient options or challenge my right to decide what treatments I’m entitled to, even if its entirely unintentional, I’m all for that.

Be that as it may, I am still not advocating for the State defined suicide bill.  Anyone who appreciates freedom should know better than to let the state define and then interpret the rules of individual extinction.  Too much power over life and death.  It’s just a bad idea.

 

HB 513 2011

HB 304 2009  (appears under year 2010 in advanced bill search. (?))

 

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