Apparently Delmar does not care about the thoughts of those he represents.

Can you imagine -- Not everyone that agrees with decriminalizing marijuana smokes. Many just don't want their tax dollars wasted chasing and jailing pot heads. Just leave the pot heads alone and spend my tax dollars chasing murderers.

When will people remember that prohibition causes violence because it creates the underground market.

"Many social problems have been attributed to the Prohibition era. A profitable, often violent, black market for alcohol flourished. Racketeering happened when powerful gangs corrupted law enforcement agencies. Stronger liquor surged in popularity because its potency made it more profitable to smuggle. The cost of enforcing prohibition was high, and the lack of tax revenues on alcohol (some $500 million annually nationwide) affected government coffers. When repeal of prohibition occurred in 1933, following passage of the Twenty-first Amendment, organized crime lost nearly all of its black market alcohol profits in most states (states still had the right to enforce their own laws concerning alcohol consumption), due to competition with low-priced alcohol sales at legal liquor stores."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition_in_the_United_States

About time there is a new blog entry!!

As for Rep. Delmar, what a jackass.

In New Hampshire, when you call your state representative, you don’t speak to some staffer; you speak to the rep himself. If you e-mail your representative, he’s the one who writes the response. It’s very personal. And it’s very..

My email to Mr. Burridge about this is below. Check my latest blog for more on this story...

Re- Sending money to your next Opponent--

Nice email. I saw that you said it was thrilling for one to snitch on friends? Whitey Bulger certainly thought so! Do a google search if you are unfamiliar with Whitey's work for the Boston FBI. Whitey was good at several things. Snitching, serial murder, and extortion.

Sorry to hear about the loss of your brother. I have lost many friends and some family members to drugs and alcohol. Yet, I do not think that changes anything, nor does the legality of a substance have much bearing on its use. Your brother chose to drive high. He probably would have done the same whether pot was legal or illegal. Having pot illegal did not stop your brother from illegal actions. Are we being punished because your brother made poor decisions?

Drunk driving is the biggest drug issue out there. It kills more people than all other drugs combined. I'm wondering if you want to repeal all liquor laws and bring back prohibition to the state of NH? If you are a logical man, then that is the work you need to focus on. Love to see what kind of public support you think you can get for that.

Feel free to forward this to the police. I have a clean record and am not worried about using my god given consitutional rights of free speech!

Best,

MC

http://myspace.com/band4masscann

Seems that Rep. "Burridge" (which coincidentally rhymes with "Lack of Courage") is unaware that actual voting results from California in 1996 up through Nevada in 2006 demonstrate that at least 80% of voters who support legalizing marijuana are non-users of marijuana.

Steve in Clearwater FL

I would wonder if that response actually came from the Representative; is there any way to validate that?

I seriously doubt that there will be any passage of legalization bills any time soon.  Personally, I'm not sure I'm in favor of legalization, but I would be shocked and amazed if a majority of our lawmakers are...

Here is a letter I just sent to Mr. Burridge. I will keep you updated if he answers.

Hello Mr. Burridge,

Let me start by saying that I am a respected New Hampshire business owner and law abiding citizen that regularly pays taxes and votes. I own 3 business in New Hampshire and I am an assett to the community.

Please read this with an open mind and the intent of learning the truth about some of the things you seem to have been misinformed about for many years.

It seems that some of our representitives have not been well informed to some key information as to the positives of legalizing marijuana including some information that would be quite helpful in the legalization of marijuana.

First lets start with the marijuana is a “gateway” drug myth. Yes it IS a myth and here is the proof.

The term “gateway drug” refers to the first drug you as an individual person does, or your introduction to drugs.

Not only is it completely false that marijuana is even remotely a gateway drug, but those that claim this to be true also neglect to look at the real gateway drugs.

I believe this is because they do not want to face the reality that they are not truly informed and cling to this myth with no substantial evidence other than that they have heard this myth in the past repeatedly and choose to just accept it rather than thinking about the reality of it.

Think about it:

I was introduced to caffeine (a drug) as a small child in my soda and candy. So do we illegalize soda and candy and coffee?

I was also introduced to nicotine long before I even heard of marijuana. Cigarettes kill thousands of people a year. Do we illegalize cigarettes?

I was introduced to alcohol long before I heard of marijuana as well. Another drug that kills thousands of people every year, gives people liver damage, makes some people quite violent, impairs your ability to talk, walk, drive and think coherently. Yet this deadly drug with absolutely no positive affects is perfectly legal.

So I’d have to say that caffeine was my gateway drug followed by nicotine and I’m sure you would agree.

Here are a couple of questions for you seeing that you do not smoke marijuana and never have:

Do you drink alcohol? Do you smoke cigarettes or drink coffee? If you do then what was your gateway drug? It was not marijuana because you have never smoked it right? So it was obviously one of the THREE legal drugs you do. Was it caffeine, nicotine or alcohol perhaps? Two of the most common causes for death are listed in your listed drugs that you do regularly and perfectly legal. One of which was your “gateway drug”.

So why is marijuana so evil if you have never smoked it and you were introduced to other drugs? Marijuana did not get its evil hold on you. It must have been that evil caffeine. Let’s illegalize it!

Here are a few facts on marijuana:

Not a single person has ever died from marijuana use, EVER. There is not a single case in medical history of a marijuana related death.

Marijuana is 100% natural. There are no chemicals or deadly products added to marijuana. You grow it, pick it and smoke it.

Currently, over 55 million people in the United States regularly smoke marijuana. Many smoke to unwind after a busy day, to relieve stress, or simply for recreation.

Medical patients suffering from AIDS, cancer, chronic pain, glaucoma, anxiety, sleep disorders and stomach ailments, smoke marijuana because they find it to be an effective, safe, and inexpensive treatment for their condition.

In spite of the established medical value of marijuana, doctors are presently freely permitted to prescribe cocaine, methadone, and morphine (from which heroin is derived) - but not marijuana.

The vast majority of marijuana smokers are law-abiding and productive tax paying citizens and business owners.

The claim that marijuana kills brain cells is based on a speculative report dating back a quarter of a century that has never been supported by any scientific study.

The vast majorities of marijuana users do not commit any crimes at all other than the sole crime of possessing marijuana.

Marijuana possessors can be penalized extremely harshly. Some are even jailed with violent offenders.

Almost all human and animal studies show that marijuana decreases rather than increases aggression.

In the 12 medical marijuana states that have before-and-after data, studies have unanimously shown that not only has youth use of marijuana not gone up overall, it actually has declined since medical marijuana became legal.

With alcohol and tobacco, America has learned over the last decade that education is the most effective way to discourage use. Yet, America fails to apply these lessons to the marijuana policy and marijuana is far less harmful than either of these legal regulated drugs. This is a complete waste of a valuable source of revenue that is being pushed aside with no concrete reason to have the almost harmless marijuana illegal while tobacco and alcohol are legal and completely deadly.

If marijuana was legal and regulated in the same manner as alcohol and tobacco it would remove the black market value of marijuana and it could be taxed creating an enormous value. Estimates show that marijuana legalization would yield tax revenue of more than $2.4 billion annually if marijuana were taxed like all other goods and $6.2 billion annually if marijuana were taxed at rates comparable to those on alcohol and tobacco.

Legalizing marijuana would create jobs. Not only would it create farmers and sales agents it would also crate regulatory agencies.

A 2004 AARP poll showed that 72% of seniors support medical marijuana, and a 2005 Gallup poll found that 78% of Americans support “making marijuana legally available for doctors to prescribe in order to reduce pain and suffering.”

Marijuana remains the third most popular recreational drug of choice in the United States despite 60 years of criminal prohibition. (Second to alcohol and tobacco) According to government figures, nearly 70 million Americans have smoked marijuana at some time in their lives. Of these, 18 million have smoked marijuana within the last year, and ten million are regular marijuana smokers.

Marijuana prohibition costs taxpayers more than $7.7 billion annually. This is an enormous waste of scarce federal dollars that can be used to target violent crime.

Reports estimate that legalizing marijuana would save $7.7 billion per year in government expenditure on enforcement of prohibition. $2.4 billion would accrue to the federal government, while $5.3 billion of this savings would accrue to state and local governments.

Between 1978 and 1996 alone, 34 states passed laws recognizing marijuana's therapeutic value.

America tried alcohol prohibition between 1919 and 1931, but discovered that the crime and violence associated with prohibition was more damaging than the evil sought to be prohibited.

By stubbornly defining all marijuana smoking as criminal, including that which involves adults smoking in the privacy of their own homes when they can drink alcohol and smoke tobacco at will, we are wasting police and prosecutorial resources and funds, clogging courts, filling costly and scarce jail and prison space, and needlessly wrecking the lives and careers of genuinely good, tax paying, otherwise law abiding citizens.

Prohibition advocates argue that the government has an obligation to protect public health by outlawing marijuana, when in fact the opposite is true; state and national governments would make greater strides toward prolonging life and improving health if they legalized and subsequently regulated the sale of marijuana using the revenue for education, regulation, cultivation and sales while creating jobs by doing so.

Marijuana Prohibition Cost the U.S State and local an estimated $7.7 billion, approximately $10,400 per arrest. Of this total, annual police costs are $3.7 billion, judicial/legal costs are $853 million, and correctional costs are $3.1 billion. In both California and New York, state fiscal costs dedicated to criminal marijuana law enforcement annually total over $1 billion for each state. Not only would that money be able to be used elsewhere look at the money that would be made from legalizing the product.

Chances are you not only know someone that smokes marijuana, but you most likely know five or six people. If you don’t think you do. Think again. You’d be surprised to learn how many people actually smoke and don’t make it known solely because of it’s legal status.

The most pressing reason for decriminalization of marijuana is the drain on government funds wrought by prohibition.

In 2003, marijuana related arrests reached an all-time high of 755,186; 88 percent of these arrests were for possession alone.

The cost in imprisonment of these offenders amounts to $1.2 billion each year. The average prison sentence for cultivation of large numbers of marijuana plants (100 or more) is a minimum of five years, longer than the average sentence for manslaughter or grand theft auto. The total costs, including law enforcement, judicial proceedings and imprisonment is estimated to be between 5 and 15 billion dollars annually. That total amounts to roughly $10 billion dollars that could have been used to build new schools, to open homeless shelters or veterans hospitals, to preserve the environment or even to fund drug education programs in schools.

When state and national budget deficits are reaching all time highs, the costs of prosecuting individuals for possession of marijuana is an unjustifiable waste of taxpayer's money.

Wether you are a marijuana smoker or not, there is no way you can not seee the positive side to legalizing marijuana and the negative side to not legalizing it in New Hampshire. All it takes it a little bit of research and true education on the subject.

Thank you for reading and although you voted against the legalizing of marijuana in the past and are personally against it for reasons that may lead to a predjiduce please consider supporting the passing of bill HB92 with the facts mentioned above in mind. Solely for the benefit of New Hampshire and the ability to say that we live in a state where we support the growth and progression of our economy as well as the lives of our residents.

Thank you for your time,

Sean Conrad

Manchester, New Hampshire

Don't mind my spelling errors. I didn't proof read it first. *Doh*

Very informative to someone who lacks the knowledge, but I think it was a bit too lengthy & repetitive.