Following considerable debate on the New Hampshire Senate floor on Thursday, state lawmakers have revised and approved a House-passed bill that would legalize marijuana in the state.
The measure, which senators advanced on a 14–9 vote, next heads to the Finance Committee before returning again to the chamber floor and then potentially going back to the House of Representatives for concurrence on recent changes.
The vote on HB 1633 marks the furthest ever a marijuana legalization bill has proceeded in New Hampshire—though questions still loom large as to whether both legislative chambers can agree on a plan that will win approval from Gov. Chris Sununu (R), who has long been skeptical of the reform but has recently said he would sign a bill that meets certain conditions.
Senators adopted a handful of amendments to the legislation before the floor vote, while rejecting others. Approved changes concern issues such as penalties for cannabis in vehicles, rules around municipal approval of marijuana retailers, lobbying restrictions on licensed businesses and where revenue would be allocated. Many of the offered amendments came from Senate President Jeb Bradley (R).
The differences with the House-passed legislation would need to be approved by lawmakers in that chamber or be hammered out in a conference committee.
“No cannabis policy will be perfect,” Sen. Daryl Abbas (R) said, arguing that the amended bill “was drafted to balance the public safety needs of our communities with the legalization of cannabis.”
Abbas said that in past legislative sessions, he’s seen “some really, really, really scary policies” proposed around legalization, claiming some would have allowed smoking marijuana openly outside the Capitol building.
He also noted that most polls show that a clear majority of New Hampshire adults support legalization. “Most of the polls are pretty straightforward, all well over 70 percent on this,” he said, though he added that most people being surveyed were asked “very simple questions.”
“I think the details are very important, and we’re going to discuss a lot more of those as this debate goes on,” Abbas said.
Opponents of the bill, however—including Sen. Bill Gannon (R), who unsuccessfully tried to table the bill when it first came up on the floor Thursday—warned that legalization would flood the state with drugs, encourage youth to use cannabis, increase crime and mental health issues and expand the existing illicit market.
“We are going to change the fabric of New Hampshire if we pass this legislation,” Gannon said.
Legalization advocates cheered the milestone on Thursday but said there’s still a ways to go before marijuana’s legal in the Granite State.
“Fittingly, the ‘Live Free or Die’ state just became the first Republican-majority state legislature to vote to legalize cannabis for adults,” said Karen O’Keefe, director of state policies for the Marijuana Policy Project (MPP). “However, there are several steps to go before New Hampshire would stop being an island of prohibition.”
Bradley, the Senate president, said recently that he hopes the bill will ultimately fail in his chamber—“I don’t want to see it get out of the Senate, period,” he told a local TV reporter—but added that he feels an obligation to make changes to the bill if it’s destined to clear the Senate.
“I’m gonna try to make it the most user friendly for New Hampshire,” he said.
On the floor, Bradley told fellow opponents of legalization to nevertheless vote for certain amendments to the bill, arguing that the changes represented improvements to the proposal.
“Those of us that don’t support this bill…have an obligation, in my opinion, because it has such a dramatic impact on the state of New Hampshire, to do everything possible that we can to improve it, if it’s going to pass,” the Senate president said. “Now, I know that some of the nine of us would probably just want to derail, and I appreciate that. Maybe that will happen. But if it isn’t going to happen, it needs to be a better process.”
The latest floor changes come on top of a sweeping amendment to the House-passed bill from Sen. Daryl Abbas (R) that was approved in the Senate Judiciary Committee last week. That amendment increased a proposed 10 percent surcharge on marijuana purchases in the House-passed version of the bill to 15 percent, and it extended the fee to include medical marijuana purchases. It also increased proposed penalties for public consumption of marijuana to include possible jail time and shifted the legislation’s proposed regulatory scheme to a novel, state-run franchise system under which the state’s Liquor Commission would oversee the look, feel and operations of retail stores.
The franchise model is one supported by the governor, who has in recent weeks said he’d only consider signing the bill if lawmakers follow strict criteria laid out by his office, including limiting the number of retail stores to 15 statewide.
“Fundamentally I don’t really love this idea anyway,” Sununu said, but explained that he sees legalization as “inevitable.”
Earlier this month, the Judiciary Committee became the first-ever Senate panel to sign off on a marijuana legalization proposal, approving it on a narrow, 3–2 vote. Before advancing the measure, HB 1633, the committee approved the broad amendment from Abbas, who chaired a failed state commission on legalization late last year.
In its current version, the proposal would allow 15 stores to open statewide under a novel state-run franchise system, under which the state’s Liquor Commission would oversee the look, feel and operations of the retail shops. All purchases would be subject to a 15 percent “franchise fee,” which effectively functions as a tax.
The bill also limits each municipality to only a single cannabis retail establishment unless it’s home to more than 50,000 people. Only two cities in the state, Manchester and Nashua, meet that threshold. Local voters would also need to pre-approve the industry in order for businesses to open in that jurisdiction.
The legalization proposal passed out of the House a month ago amid warnings from Abbas and some other senators that the bill would be dead on arrival in their chamber. Sununu similarly said he wouldn’t sign the bill in its House-passed form.
As passed by the House, the bill would have legalized through a so-called “agency store” model that Abbas and others in the Senate opposed. House lawmakers rejected an earlier amendment that included many revisions later made by Abbas, opting for the agency store model offered by the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Erica Layon (R).
“I think this is an excellent bill,” Layon told colleagues ahead of the House vote, “and quite frankly I think it’s time for us to go ahead and vote on this bill, and let the other body deal with it.”
Layon has warned senators not to take House lawmakers’ votes for granted if they decided to make major changes to her bill.
Though advocates have said they’re pleased to see New Hampshire make progress toward legalization, they’re also concerned about some of the changes made by Abbas and the Senate.
ACLU of New Hampshire and other civil rights advocates, for example, have opposed the increased penalties for public consumption, warning that the more punitive would lead to disproportionately severe and lasting consequences and could end up costing the state more money because it will be required to provide defense lawyers for defendants who cannot afford one.
Abbas, however, has repeatedly complained about the smell of marijuana in public—both in legal jurisdictions and in parts of New Hampshire near neighboring states, where cannabis is legal. He’s at times called it the number one problem he has with the reform.
“Is this a huge win for the state? I’m not saying that,” he said in committee earlier this month. “I just have concerns right now because we’re dealing with what we can’t control. We can’t control what they do in Maine. We can’t control what they do in Vermont. We can’t control what they do in Massachusetts.”
With only several months left in Sununu’s term, observers are also weighing how the governor’s potential replacements might greet legalization. At least one possible successor, former U.S. Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R)—one of a handful of gubernatorial candidates that’s entered the race—said recently that she opposes legalizing marijuana for adults.
“I don’t think legalizing marijuana is the right direction for our state,” said Ayotte, who represented New Hampshire in the Senate from 2011 to 2017 and was previously the state’s attorney general from 2004 to 2009.
Lawmakers worked extensively on marijuana reform issues last session and attempted to reach a compromise to enact legalization through a multi-tiered system that would include state-controlled shops, dual licensing for existing medical cannabis dispensaries and businesses privately licensed to individuals by state agencies. The legislature ultimately hit an impasse on the complex legislation.
Bicameral lawmakers also convened the state commission tasked with studying legalization and proposing a path forward last year, though the group ultimately failed to arrive at a consensus or propose final legislation.
Last May, the House defeated marijuana legalization language that was included in a Medicaid expansion bill. The Senate also moved to table another piece of legislation that month that would have allowed patients and designated caregivers to cultivate up to three mature plants, three immature plants and 12 seedlings for personal therapeutic use.
After the Senate rejected the reform bills in 2022, the House included legalization language as an amendment to separate criminal justice-related legislation—but that was also struck down in the opposite chamber.
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