New Hampshire

(Opinion) Biden administration proposal would harm New Hampshire researchers and patients – NH Business Review

Published

2 years ago

March 15, 2024

(Opinion) Biden administration proposal would harm New Hampshire researchers and patients – NH Business Review

New plan could prevent university medical discoveries from making it out of the lab

The National Institutes of Health awarded over $157 million in research grants to Dartmouth, the University of New Hampshire, and other institutions across the state last year. This funding, and similar grants from other federal agencies, help researchers make groundbreaking discoveries across a host of sectors, from life sciences and agriculture to computing and energy.

Yet a new proposal from the Biden administration could prevent the most exciting university discoveries from making it out of the lab.

The plan would give federal officials unprecedented power to interfere in the contracts signed between academic research institutions and private companies. That’d discourage companies from licensing the discoveries made by these institutions, and thereby prevent firms from turning universities’ good ideas into tangible products.

The proposal dramatically reinterprets the government’s “march-in” rights under the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980.

Most Americans have likely never heard of that bipartisan law, which has fueled our country’s medical and technological innovation for four decades. The Bayh-Dole Act allowed universities, other research institutions and small businesses to retain the patent rights on discoveries they made with the help of federal grants.

These institutions could then license those patents to private companies willing to take on the risk of developing real-life products.

Before Congress passed that law, the government took the patent rights on discoveries stemming from federally funded research. And because the government rarely licensed those patents, few companies worked to commercialize theoretical breakthroughs into products. Without secure patent rights, they had no incentive to, as they had no way to stop competitors from piggybacking on their work and undercutting them in the marketplace.

Put another way, taxpayers’ research dollars were advancing our collective understanding of science, but we had few tangible advances to show for it.

Bayh-Dole changed that by incentivizing universities to partner with companies to bring those discoveries to market. Since 1980, the patent licensing — and subsequent research, development and manufacturing — enabled by the Bayh-Dole Act has directly contributed $1 trillion to the U.S. gross domestic product and supported 6.5 million jobs. The law has been especially impactful in life sciences, leading to the development of more than 200 vaccines and life-saving drugs.

One notable example of these drugs is infliximab, which originated from research at New York University School of Medicine and was later licensed and commercialized by Janssen Biotech, now part of Johnson & Johnson, in 1998. The medicine is commonly used to treat certain forms of arthritis, which affects roughly 280,000 New Hampshire residents and one in four U.S. adults nationwide.

If the Biden administration’s proposal were in place in the 1990s, this medicine might not have made it to patients, as companies would have had very little reason to risk capital on federally funded research. Why spend billions of dollars, and more than a decade, bringing a new technology to market if the government can simply snatch the patent rights as soon as it reaches the shelves?

That is, effectively, what the new plan envisions. Drugs and other technologies would once again never make it out of university laboratories, and American patients would be at the brunt of the medical drought.

New treatments for arthritis and other diseases are just around the corner. But no matter how promising the science, those prospective treatments will never reach patients if the administration gets its way.

Julia Moore is executive director of Rhode Island and Northern New England for the Arthritis Foundation.

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New Hampshire

Your weekly guide to taking action in New Hampshire May 6-10, 2026 –

Published

11 hours ago

May 5, 2026

Press Room

Your weekly guide to taking action in New Hampshire May 6-10, 2026 –

Protests and rallies:

📅 Wednesday (May 6)

New Hampshire Peace Action: Vigil for Permanent Ceasefire Now! (Dover, 2 p.m.)

New Hampshire Peace Action: Ceasefire Now! (Hanover, 4-5 p.m.)

603Forward: North Country Power Hour (Gorham, 6 p.m.)

📅 Thursday (May 7)

New Hampshire Peace Action: Ceasefire Vigil (Concord, 12-1:30 p.m.)

American Friends Service Committee: Meeting for Worship with Attention to Peace (Virtually, 7:30 p.m.)

Brookline Democrats: Gerrymandering in NH (Brookline Historical Society, 6:30 p.m.)

📅 Friday (May 8)

American Friends Service Committee: Action Hour for Palestine (Virtual, 12 p.m.)

Indivisible: Nashua Bridge Brigade (Nashua, 2-4 p.m.)

New Hampshire Public Radio: By Degrees Climate Summit Community Resilience (Manchester, 12 p.m.)

Rochester Dems: Dance for Democracy (Rochester Performing & Arts Center, 6 p.m.)

📅 Saturday (May 9)

NH Peace Action: Standing against authoritarian actions (Kingston, 11 a.m.- 2 p.m.)

New Hampshire Democratic Party: Pro-Democracy Weekly Visibility (Derry, 12 p.m)

📅 Sunday (May 10)

Occupy Seacoast: Civil Rights Sunday (Portsmouth, 12-4 p.m.)

First Unitarian Universalist Society of Exeter: Bridge Brigade (Exeter, 5-5:30 p.m.)

Have an event to add? Email Lily Jackson, lily@couriernewsroom.com with details (please send details at least one week before the event).

Make Mother’s Day memorable with these 6 activities in New Hampshire

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New Hampshire

NH Lottery Powerball, Pick 3 Day winning numbers for May 4, 2026

Published

23 hours ago

May 5, 2026

Press Room

The New Hampshire Lottery offers several draw games for those aiming to win big.

Here’s a look at Monday, May 4, 2026 results for each game:

Winning Powerball numbers from May 4 drawing

30-36-42-60-63, Powerball: 13, Power Play: 2

Check Powerball payouts and previous drawings here.

Winning Pick 3 numbers from May 4 drawing

Day: 6-2-1

Evening: 3-3-9

Check Pick 3 payouts and previous drawings here.

Winning Pick 4 numbers from May 4 drawing

Day: 7-9-1-8

Evening: 9-8-0-8

Check Pick 4 payouts and previous drawings here.

Winning Megabucks Plus numbers from May 4 drawing

01-05-33-34-41, Megaball: 05

Check Megabucks Plus payouts and previous drawings here.

Winning Gimme 5 numbers from May 4 drawing

23-27-29-37-38

Check Gimme 5 payouts and previous drawings here.

Winning Millionaire for Life numbers from May 4 drawing

08-17-22-34-39, Bonus: 05

Check Millionaire for Life payouts and previous drawings here.

Feeling lucky? Explore the latest lottery news & results

When are the New Hampshire Lottery drawings held?

Powerball: 10:59 p.m. Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday.
Pick 3, 4: 1:10 p.m. and 6:55 p.m. daily.
Mega Millions: 11:00 p.m. Tuesday and Friday.
Megabucks Plus: 7:59 p.m. Monday, Wednesday and Saturday.
Lucky for Life: 10:38 p.m. daily.
Gimme 5: 6:55 p.m. Monday through Friday.
Millionaire for Life: 11:15 p.m. daily.

This results page was generated automatically using information from TinBu and a template written and reviewed by a New Hampshire managing editor. You can send feedback using this form.

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New Hampshire

NH medical marijuana program added 2,100 new patients last year – Monadnock Ledger-Transcript

Published

1 day ago

May 4, 2026

Press Room

NH medical marijuana program added 2,100 new patients last year – Monadnock Ledger-Transcript

More than 2,100 new patients signed up with New Hampshire’s Therapeutic Cannabis Program last year, bringing the total registry to nearly 17,000, according to new state data.

That increase — about 14.5% from the year prior — is the largest since 2021.

Likely driving the growth were changes to state law in 2024 that allowed more people to qualify for medical marijuana use. They can now join the program at doctors’ discretion — which covers any debilitating or terminal condition or symptom, as long as their medical provider agrees the benefits of cannabis could outweigh the risks — or with a diagnosis of generalized anxiety disorder.

More than 900 patients list anxiety as their qualifying condition, according to the report issued this week by the state Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the program.

“There was certainly an uptick in growth after those bills took effect in late 2024. It hasn’t skyrocketed, but has somewhat accelerated the growth of the program,” said Matt Simon, a lobbyist for GraniteLeaf Cannabis, one of three licensed cannabis providers in the state. “Where we’ve been, this extremely tiny program that was tiny for years, it is steadily growing.”

With 16,846 people, about 1.2% of the population are either certified patients or designated caregivers, who are authorized to buy cannabis on behalf of a patient. That’s close to one in every 84 Granite Staters.

The data released by the state was collected in June 2025. Simon estimates roughly 1,000 more people have joined since then.

The Therapeutic Cannabis Program, established in 2013, is the only way to lawfully consume marijuana in New Hampshire, as recreational use remains illegal. Patients require a doctor’s approval to join and receive a state-issued card that licenses them to buy medical cannabis products from seven dispensaries across the state, operated by three producers: GraniteLeaf Cannabis, Sanctuary Medicinals and Temescal Wellness.

The new data comes as the Trump administration reclassified medical marijuana last month as a less dangerous drug, effectively legitimizing programs run in 40 states, including New Hampshire’s. The change opens the door for more cannabis research and potential tax breaks for producers.

NH Therapeutic Cannabis Program patients by municipality Credit: NH Department of Health and Human Services

In New Hampshire, program demographics skew older. Nearly a quarter of patients are between 55 and 65 years old, and almost 70% of patients are over the age of 45. Pain is far and away the most common condition that people aim to treat with cannabis.

Patients are concentrated in southern New Hampshire and in towns where dispensaries, also called alternative treatment centers, are located. There are seven across the state in Chichester, Conway, Dover, Keene, Lebanon, Merrimack and Plymouth.

Concord has between 300 and 734 patients, according to the state data. Manchester has the most patients out of any municipality, at 1,150.

Despite the program’s growth, cost and accessibility remain a challenge. Jerry Knirk, a retired surgeon and state representative who now chairs the state’s Therapeutic Cannabis Medical Oversight Board, said New Hampshire’s strict regulatory environment plays a role.

“Part of the issue is we have a very high-quality, highly regulated program with testing of all products and lots of restrictions and things, and that does make things more expensive, but it’s how you keep the quality to be really high,” Knirk said. “We want to have really good quality. Unfortunately, it does make it a little bit harder.

One family of three spent $548 after discounts on a six-week supply of their medicine, which they use for chronic pain and other ailments, the Monitor reported last year.

Limited retail locations also mean that in some parts of the North Country, patients must drive upwards of an hour to obtain their medicine.

“The lack of dispensary locations, well, yeah, that is a problem,” Knirk said.

The oversight board, joined by other advocates, has pushed for laws to alleviate those concerns. Some of the biggest include allowing patients to grow their own medicine at home and letting dispensaries use outdoor greenhouses to cut down on electricity costs.

That legislation is introduced in the State House almost every year but is often torpedoed by Republicans’ concerns over security protocols.

While advocates expected little movement on marijuana policy under Gov. Kelly Ayotte, who opposes legalizing recreational use, the bill to allow greenhouse cultivation is nearing the finish line this session. Former governor Chris Sununu vetoed a similar bill two years ago; Ayotte hasn’t indicated whether she’d sign it.

Simon said that while cost and accessibility are still challenges, patient satisfaction with the program is improving.

“We started in a tough place with a lot of people really not liking the law and the program,” he said. “I think it’s been steady growth and steady improvement. Prices have come down somewhat, and the vibes are better.”

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