A New Hampshire effort to revive a bill that would have allowed medical marijuana operators in the state to open second cultivation locations—including in greenhouses, which is currently forbidden—fell short on Thursday.
House lawmakers successfully voted to override the governor’s veto of the legislation, but later in the day senators opted to sustain it.
The votes came as part of a return to the State House known as “veto day,” when lawmakers consider overriding the governor’s rejection of bills passed during the session.
The House of Representatives voted 270–55 to reverse Gov. Chris Sununu’s (R) veto of HB 1581, sponsored by Rep. Suzanne Vail (D). But later in the afternoon, the Senate voted 14–9 in opposition to overturning the governor’s action.
Current law in New Hampshire requires marijuana be grown in indoor, brick-and-mortar facilities. Supporters of the bill said the greenhouse option would have offered operators a less costly and potentially more environmentally friendly alternative.
Ahead of the House vote in favor of overturning the veto, Rep. Erica Layon (R) told colleagues that the bill was fine as-is and didn’t deserve to be vetoed.
“Quite frankly, we don’t need anything more than what was passed,” she said. “It was a beautifully written, elegant bill that added only the language we needed.”
Sununu in July had vetoed the measure after it passed the legislature, claiming in a statement that the bill “provides scant detail regarding safety, security and location requirements.”
“These details are necessary to ensure appropriate controls on a regulated substance,” he said at the time.
Layon said of Sununu’s veto that “while I appreciate that the governor is very concerned to make sure that we’re doing it right, we already are,” noting that there are 45 pages of existing administrative rules that deal with matters such as siting the new grows, safety and security.
Under existing law in New Hampshire, ATCs are required to grow marijuana in secure, indoor locations. The use of semi-outdoor structures, including greenhouses, is prohibited.
“The bill says that a dispensary can build additional locations for cultivation of the cannabis product they use. This could be a greenhouse or another building,” Vail told Marijuana Moment of her proposal, pushing back on the governor’s assertions that regulations were lacking. “Contrary to the governor’s veto message, any new facility would go through the same process as the original dispensaries and their original cultivation locations, to get townspeople’s approval and to meet the rigorous security requirements that are already in place in the facilities that we have set up right now.”
Representatives for medical marijuana operators said they were disappointed at the result of Thursday’s effort. Matt Simon, director of public and government relations at medical marijuana provider GraniteLeaf Cannabis, said that “a lot of people are having a hard time understanding why this was even considered controversial.”
“New Hampshire is the ‘Live Free or Die’ state,” he told Marijuana Moment after the veto was upheld, “but it’s also a state where a small subset of elected officials continue to hold irrational, authoritarian views on cannabis policy. Perhaps this dynamic will change after the upcoming election.”
(Disclosure: Simon supports Marijuana Moment’s work with a monthly pledge on Patreon.)
Since the end of this 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.
As for more ambitious efforts to legalize adult-use marijuana in New Hampshire this session, lawmakers at the last minute narrowly shot down legalization legislation in June when House Democrats tabled the legalization measure, effectively killing it.
The move, however, sparked accusations that politicians were using the issue to earn the party votes at the ballot box in November. But most who voted against the bill said they were opposed to the plan on its merits, pointing to the proposal’s state-controlled franchise model, which would have given the state unprecedented sway over retail stores and consumer prices.
A poll released this summer showed 61 support for that bill among New Hampshire residents—just a few percentage points below the 65 percent support that respondents to a separate poll said they have for legalization generally.
Voters are now also less than a month away from electing lawmakers as well as a new governor. Sununu, who is not seeking reelection, hesitantly supported legalization, but the two major party candidates seeking to replace him are starkly divided on the issue. Democrat Joyce Craig has said she’d support the reform, pointing to potential revenue that could fund housing and schools, while Republican Kelly Ayotte has belittled that plan.
“Joyce Craig can smoke her way to a balanced budget, but I’m going to do it the old-fashioned way,” Ayotte, a former U.S. senator and state attorney general, told local media last month. “We’re going to live within our means.”
During an earlier interview with legalization advocates, Craig said she opposed putting the Liquor Commission at the helm of the cannabis industry, instead favoring smaller, private businesses run by local owners.
Craig, the former mayor of Manchester, also said she believes the state should move quickly to establish its own cannabis industry before the federal government opens state borders to cannabis commerce and favors a legalization structure that disincentivizes large or multi-state operators dominating New Hampshire’s market.
New Hampshire 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.
Also this week, a New Hampshire House committee 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.
The House Health, Human Services and Elderly Affairs Committee voted 14–1 to advance a report that notes ongoing research being done into psychedelic-assisted therapy—a project of Massachusetts General Hospital and the Veterans Administration (VA)—and recommends “future legislation to permit patients access to clinical trials and other therapy.”
But for now, lawmakers said, the state isn’t ready to legalize and regulate entheogens that remain federally illegal.
Photo courtesy of Chris Wallis // Side Pocket Images.
A New Hampshire effort to revive a bill that would have allowed medical marijuana operators in the state to open second cultivation locations—including in greenhouses, which is currently forbidden—fell short on Thursday. House lawmakers successfully voted to override the governor’s veto of the legislation, but later in the day senators opted to sustain it. The Read More