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New Hampshire House Majority Leader Says State Won’t Legalize Marijuana ‘For Another Decade, Probably’

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The majority leader of New Hampshire’s House of Representatives said that the “ship has sailed” on the issue of marijuana legalization and, in his view, it will be another ten years or so before the state has a good chance to join its neighbors in enacting the reform.

“We had an opportunity with the last governor to put that issue behind us, and frankly, we blew it,” Rep. Jason Osborne (R), who has sponsored cannabis legalization legislation in the past, said in an interview with a local ABC affiliate. “So I don’t imagine us coming back to that for another decade, probably.”

He added that last November’s election of Kelly Ayotte—a former U.S. senator and state attorney general who said repeatedly on the campaign trail that she would oppose efforts at adult-use legalization as governor—also shifted energy away from the reform.

“To me, you know, we elected a governor to lead the state, and that is not a priority for her,” Osborne said, “and so that is not a priority for me or the rest of us at this point.”

New Hampshire lawmakers nearly passed legislation last session that would have legalized and regulated marijuana for adults. The Republican-sponsored measure—one that then-Gov. Chris Sununu (R) said he’d support—had bipartisan support in both legislative chambers, but House Democrats narrowly voted to table it at the last minute, taking issue with the proposal’s state-controlled franchise model, which would have given the state unprecedented sway over retail stores and consumer prices.

Though Osborne worked with lawmakers hoping to pass last year’s bill, he said after its failure that he thinks the issue’s time is past, at least for now.

“Now that we have decriminalized up to 3/4 ounce and one can buy legal products right across every border of our tiny state,” he told Marijuana Moment at the time, “full retail legalization for NH is just not as important to people as it was a decade ago.”

A poll from last June found that almost two thirds (65 percent) of New Hampshire residents supported legalizing marijuana, while nearly as many (61 percent) said they supported the failed legalization bill, HB 1633.

Daryl Eames, founder of the New Hampshire Cannabis Association (NHCANN), called Osborne’s comments “a reminder that until we have 16 senators willing to stand up to party and pressure, the adult-use market has little chance of arriving in the Granite State,” referring to the number of Senate lawmakers it would take to override a veto from Ayotte.

“The NH Senate and Governor’s office have always been the issue with legalization,” he said in an email, “and it appears they may continue to ignore the will of the people on this issue.”

Karen O’Keefe, director of state policies at the advocacy group Marijuana Policy Project, said that while she’s “not as pessimistic” about legalization’s prospects as Osbourne said he was in the recent WMUR interview, “the House killing the Senate-passed bill last year definitely set legalization back.”

“My guess is the House will pass legalization in some fashion regardless,” she added. “Obviously the governor is an obstacle and the Senate is very tough.”

In an email to Marijuana Moment on Monday, Osborne clarified that it might not be “a decade” before lawmakers again take up cannabis legalization.

“‘Decade’ was just what came out of my mouth in the moment,” he said. “What I mean is that we will not see broad marijuana legalization taken seriously as long as the current governor is in office.”

Matt Simon, director of public and government relations at the medical marijuana provider GraniteLeaf, said that in light of the obstacles facing adult-use legalization under Ayotte and the current legislature, it’s likely that advocates and lawmakers will work on making adjustments to the state’s existing medical marijuana program.

“Legalization obviously appears very unlikely this year, so we will be focusing our efforts on bills that would make modest yet substantive improvements to the therapeutic cannabis law,” he said.

(Disclosure: Simon supports Marijuana Moment’s work via a monthly pledge on Patreon.)

GraniteLeaf is tracking several cannabis measures this session, including medical marijuana bills that would legalize home cultivation by patients, allow broader use of hemp-derived cannabinoids, permit medical marijuana operators to operate as for-profit entities, increase purchase limits and more.

At least three other bills would legalize cannabis for adults, though two would only allow personal use and would not legalize retail sales.

Granite Staters broadly support enacting legalization, with polling earlier this year support for legalization generally at about 65 percent. A separate poll released this summer showed 61 support among residents for the bill that nearly became law this past year.

Before this past year’s bill fizzled out, New Hampshire lawmakers worked extensively on marijuana legalization in 2023, working toward a compromise that would enact the reform 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, however.

Bicameral lawmakers also convened a state commission tasked with studying legalization and proposing a path forward ahead of last year’s session though the group ultimately failed to arrive at a consensus or propose final legislation.

A year earlier, the Senate defeated a more conventional House-passed legalization bill, HB 639, despite its bipartisan support.

Since the end of last year’s regular legislative session, Sununu did approve some more minor marijuana reforms. Perhaps most notably, he signed into a law a significant medical marijuana expansion bill to allow doctors to recommend cannabis for any debilitating condition they believe it would improve. Previously, patients needed to be diagnosed with certain specific conditions to qualify for legal marijuana access.

Enactment of that measure came after the governor signed two other medical marijuana expansion bills: one that added generalized anxiety disorder as a qualifying condition and another that allowed more healthcare providers to certify patients for the state’s medical marijuana program.

Separately, a New Hampshire House committee last October declined to move forward with a bill that would have established a state-regulated therapeutic psychedelic program modeled after the current medical marijuana system, but members of the panel generally agreed that lawmakers should pursue future legislation to expand legal access to substances like psilocybin and LSD.

Virginia GOP Governor Claims Legalizing Marijuana Sales Would Harm Children And Increase Crime

Photo courtesy of Philip Steffan.

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Ben Adlin, a senior editor at Marijuana Moment, has been covering cannabis and other drug policy issues professionally since 2011. He was previously a senior news editor at Leafly, an associate editor at the Los Angeles Daily Journal and a Coro Fellow in Public Affairs. He lives in Washington State.

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