Attorney Paul Twomey, right, and Linda Horan meet with the media after a court hearing.
The state Supreme Court has vacated the court order requiring a medical marijuana ID card be issued to Linda Horan, which ends the appeal the attorney general quietly filed before her death from lung cancer.
“(The court) issued a one-sentence order …. saying that the case was moot because of Linda’s death,” said Paul Twomey, who represented Horan pro bono when she sued the state last November.
Horan, a telephone worker and labor activist from Alstead, was dying of cancer when she fought to get the medical marijuana ID card so she could obtain it in Maine because the state’s dispensaries were not open yet. They still aren’t open, but three are expected to open in several weeks.
The appeal is over, but nothing really changed, according to Twomey, who said Horan’s fight to get the card for herself and ultimately all other qualifying patients in New Hampshire was not in vain.
“What (the attorney general) wanted from the appeal was an order that the ID cards could only be used in New Hampshire and they don’t have it and will never have it because it is not the law passed by the Legislature. And it is absurd,” Twomey said.
Assistant Attorney General Jill Desrochers emailed the order to InDepthNH.org, but offered no comment on the decision.
Horan was always flanked by friends and supporters at court hearings, union gatherings and at her bedside at the end when she died at age 64 on Feb. 1.
“Linda got the ID card and used it in Maine and she fought for all the other patients and they got their cards,” Twomey said. “It’s time to declare victory and go home.”
On Nov. 24, 2015, Merrimack County Superior Court Judge Richard McNamara ordered the state to issue an ID card to Horan. The state had argued unsuccessfully that the law required ID cards be issued to qualifying patients only after Alternative Treatment Centers in New Hampshire opened.
A month later, Attorney General Joseph Foster appealed McNamara’s order to the state Supreme Court, but it wasn’t made public until mid-February, after Horan’s death.
Jake Leon, spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, said 357 medical marijuana ID cards have been sent to qualifying patients, 160 are in process and another 100 have been returned because they were incomplete.
“We don’t have a firm date, but we do expect three ATCs will be opening in next several weeks,” Leon said.
Those are in Lebanon, Plymouth and Dover, he said. The Merrimack dispensary has been delayed because it had to change locations, Leon said.