Politics
New Hampshire Should Keep Marijuana Illegal Even As Neighboring States Generate Tax Revenue From It, GOP Governor Says
New Hampshire’s Republican governor is continuing to make it clear that she does not support legalizing marijuana as she asks voters to reelect her next week.
Gov. Kelly Ayotte (R) said at a forum in Manchester on Sunday that the issue of cannabis represents a “big difference'” between her and Democratic challenger Cinde Warmington, who has consistently highlighted her support for marijuana legalization on the campaign trail ahead of next week’s election.
The incumbent governor was asked at the forum whether she views legal marijuana revenue as a way to replace funding that is being cut for education, student sports and after-school programs.
While Ayotte said it is “really important that we have a strong education system,” she does not think legalizing cannabis is the solution—citing concerns about addiction, mental health and impaired driving.
“I don’t think that legalizing cannabis improves our quality of life,” she said.
The governor pushed back against the notion that New Hampshire should catch up to its neighboring states that are legalizing marijuana.
“I know often the argument is made, ‘well, there’s all of our neighbors are that way. Why shouldn’t we take this revenue?,'” she said. “I never say, ‘Oh, our neighbors are doing it, so we should do it.’ I think about my own children. I tell them, ‘Your friends are doing it, you’re doing it.'”
“That’s not really a good standard,” Ayotte said. “We need to make sure we’re looking at our own quality of life and what is the right thing to do for New Hampshire. And when you legalize something, it does send a different message to our young people. So I worry about that and our quality of life. So this is just something we differ on, and I do not think that that revenue is one that comes without a deep cost for New Hampshire.”
Ayotte also discussed her opposition to legalizing marijuana at a debate with Warmington last week, arguing that cannabis revenue “comes at a huge cost.”
“It comes at the cost of the mental health of our young people. It comes at the cost of our quality of life,” she said. “I don’t think following because our neighbors do something, we should do it. We have the same discussion with our kids, right? If if Johnny jumps off the bridge, are you going to jump off the bridge with it?”
Warmington, on the other hand, said during the debate that “I support the the sale and legalization of cannabis as an additional revenue source in our state.”
“I think it is really odd that we are sending our citizenry over state lines and paying millions and millions—tens of millions—of dollars to our neighboring state in taxes when that revenue should be here in our state,” the former New Hampshire Executive Council member said.
Warmington has previously discussed her support for legalizing marijuana, including at a town hall event last month when she said that “there is no reason why the citizens of New Hampshire should be driving across state borders to pay taxes to Massachusetts, Vermont and Maine to purchase a product that they obviously have stated that they want to have access to in our state.”
Ayotte, for her part, recently vetoed legislation to allow businesses in the state’s existing medical cannabis program to cultivate in greenhouses.
Her veto was overridden by lawmakers, however, and now the medical marijuana cultivation measure has become law despite her objections.
In June, Warmington criticized Ayotte’s veto of the medical marijuana proposal.
“Come on, Kelly. Shouldn’t we be trying to make health care more affordable for Granite Staters, not less?” said in a video posted to social media.
“This bill would have made medical cannabis more affordable and more accessible to Granite Staters who really need it, and she vetoed it,” Warmington said. “But honestly, this is what we’ve come to expect from Kelly Ayotte. Look what she did to the Medicaid premiums. She increased them by up to $270 a month on the most vulnerable Granite Staters. She increased prescription co-pays when other costs are already going through the roof.”
“New Hampshire deserves a governor who will fight to make sure we have lower health care costs and that health care is more accessible,” the Democratic candidate, who previously served as a member of the New Hampshire Executive Council, said. “That’s the bottom line.”
In a veto statement on the medical marijuana greenhouse bill, the governor simply said, “I do not support expanding the cultivation of marijuana in our state.”
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Ayotte has separately threatened to veto any marijuana legalization bill that reaches her desk.
The governor said last year that her position on the reform would not change even as the federal government moved forward with rescheduling the plant.
Photo courtesy of Philip Steffan.
