By Granite State Report
New Hampshire House Bill 360 prohibits public schools from performing surgical procedures or prescribing pharmaceutical drugs. On its face, that may sound like a decisive intervention. In reality, it is legislation aimed at a practice that is not occurring—because public schools do not perform surgeries and do not prescribe medication.
They never have.
This is not a matter of opinion. It is a matter of basic institutional fact.
Public schools in New Hampshire—and in the United States—are not medical facilities. They do not operate surgical suites. They do not employ physicians to prescribe drugs. They do not dispense prescription medication beyond routine nurse-administered care already governed by strict medical and parental consent rules. Any surgical or pharmaceutical treatment for a student happens through licensed healthcare providers, regulated by state and federal law, entirely outside the authority of schools.
HB 360 does not close a loophole. It invents one.
The sponsors—among them Rep. Kristin Noble and several colleagues—are asking the legislature to devote time, debate, and votes to banning an activity that does not occur, has not been documented, and is not permitted under existing law. That should not be treated as harmless redundancy. It is a warning sign.
When lawmakers draft bills untethered from real-world conditions, they are not governing—they are legislating narratives.
Supporters of HB 360 will argue that the bill is “preventative.” That argument fails immediately. Prevention presupposes risk. There is no evidence—none—that New Hampshire public schools are performing surgeries or prescribing drugs to students. Zero cases. Zero findings. Zero enforcement actions. Preventing an imaginary threat is not foresight; it is fantasy.
More troubling is what this bill reveals about legislative priorities.
At a time when New Hampshire faces documented, measurable crises—housing shortages, special education underfunding, workforce attrition, rising healthcare costs, and declining trust in institutions—the legislature chose to advance a bill targeting a non-existent practice. That is not neutral. Every hour spent debating HB 360 is an hour not spent addressing problems that actually affect people’s lives.
This is not how serious legislatures behave.
HB 360 also demonstrates how culture-war politics distort governance. The bill’s language mirrors national talking points rather than local conditions. It responds to fear-driven narratives circulating online and on cable news—not to anything happening in New Hampshire schools. When legislation is written to validate outrage rather than regulate reality, the result is policy theater.
Policy theater has consequences.
It clogs committees, confuses the public, and undermines confidence in government. It teaches citizens that the legislature is more interested in symbolic combat than in competent oversight. And it risks creating legal confusion by implying schools possess powers they never had—inviting suspicion where none was warranted.
Perhaps most damaging of all, HB 360 insults the intelligence of the public.
Voters are capable of understanding the difference between real policy debates and manufactured ones. They know schools are not hospitals. They know nurses are not surgeons. When lawmakers pretend otherwise, they do not appear vigilant—they appear detached.
The fact that this bill advanced at all should prompt a harder conversation about standards, seriousness, and responsibility in the legislature. A functioning body does not spend its time banning unicorns.
New Hampshire deserves lawmakers focused on real problems, grounded in facts, and capable of distinguishing between reality and rhetoric. HB 360 fails that test completely.
When legislation is built on something that is not happening, the question is no longer whether the bill is necessary. The question is why the legislature thought this was worth doing at all.
https://gc.nh.gov/bill_status/legacy/bs2016/billText.aspx?sy=2026&id=403&txtFormat=html
