Politics
New Hampshire Lawmakers To Move Forward With Marijuana Legalization Bill Despite Governor’s Opposition
A New Hampshire House committee plans to move forward with a bill to legalize marijuana–even though members accept that it is unlikely to advance beyond the chamber given opposition in the Senate and the threat of a veto by the governor.
“We know where it’s going to go. Let’s send a virtue signal,” the sponsor of the legalization proposal, Rep. Jared Sullivan (D), said during a House Commerce and Consumer Affairs Committee hearing on Wednesday. “Let them be the ones that are pissing off voters who care about this.”
The committee chairman, Rep. John Hunt (R), initially put forward what he called a “brilliant idea to solve this problem” that he wanted to explore, amending the legislation to make it so only cannabis beverages with up to 5mg of THC could be sold through the state’s government-run liquor stores.
“We would be treating it just like alcohol in terms of our regulatory authority, so we’re not giving any special privilege to anybody to have that on that marketplace,” he said.
The chairman argued that restricting sales to canned beverages could mitigate one of the chief complaints from opponents regarding their concerns about the smell of marijuana flower.
“But knowing full well that the governor is going to veto no matter what we do, then is it really worth it to pursue this?” he asked.
Sullivan ultimately made a persuasive defense of moving forward with his original bill, pointing out that the House has repeatedly passed similar legalization legislation and that the chamber should stand its ground, forcing the Senate and governor to again go on record with their opposition to a policy popular among voters.
He told to the chairman that, if he wants to legalize THC beverages through a separate legislative vehicle and regulate it in the way some states have done with hemp, he’d be amenable to that discussion. But he didn’t want to cede his bill to the opposition when the House has the votes to pass it.
“I think we should try to legalize it in some form similar to what’s in this bill, which is basically very similar form to what we’ve already passed the House already. And that’s what we should do,” he said. “Yes, the governor and most likely the Senate are going to kill this bill, right? Like, whatever, but that’s on them—and that’s on them to their voters.”
“Most people in this state want it, so our job is to not make the governor’s reelection campaign easier. If this turns into an issue, that’s not our job,” he said.
He also pushed back against the chairman’s position that cannabis odor is the key reason for opposition in the Senate. After then-Gov. Chris Sununu (R) made a surprising reversal on marijuana policy last session, calling for legalization through a controversial state-run sales model, the Senate passed a bill accordingly—and it was rejected by the House because “people were disgusted by the model,” Sullivan said.
“The smoking fear is not the hurdle. The hurdle is the corrupt model that would have been in place with that system—or what we thought would be corrupt,” he said. “And so I think, I think if you like the idea of selling things within the liquor commission, I think there’s a way to accomplish your goal through a different avenue. But we shouldn’t dilute this bill, which has passed the House already in very similar language and keep sending the signal that this is what we want.”
The committee is expected to vote to send the legalization bill to the House floor at a subsequent meeting in the coming weeks.
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Meanwhile, after the House added provisions to a Senate-passed bill that would allow medical marijuana patients to grow cannabis at home, those measures were stripped in conference.
Gov. Kelly Ayotte (R) also said last month that her position on marijuana legalization would not change even if the federal government moved forward with rescheduling the plant—a policy change President Donald Trump is actively considering.
“If federal law changes, I have to comply with federal law,” Ayotte said. “But my position has been, and continues to be, that we should not legalize marijuana in the future.”
Photo courtesy of Mike Latimer.
