New Hampshire Governor Candidates Discuss Marijuana Legalization Ahead Of Primary, With Democrats In Support And Republicans Opposed

Ahead of New Hampshire’s primary elections on Tuesday, candidates for governor in the state are weighing in on whether and how lawmakers should legalize marijuana. All three leading Democrats say they’d support the reform—though they differ on key policy details—while top Republicans, unlike outgoing Gov. Chris Sununu (R), say they would oppose legalization.

The three Democratic contenders sat down with marijuana reform advocates late last month to discuss their stances on legalization and what they think the state’s eventual cannabis market should look like. All candidates agreed that it’s time for New Hampshire to end prohibition, but each described a different vision of how to do it.

Daryl Eames, founder of the New Hampshire Cannabis Association (NHCANN), told Marijuana Moment the goal of the candidate interview series his organization hosted wasn’t to choose a preferred candidate but instead to flesh out where each stood on the issues. He said all five leading candidates were invited—Democrats Joyce Craig, Cinde Warmington and Jon Kiper as well as Republicans Kelly Ayotte and Chuck Morse.

Only the Democrats accepted the invitation to discussion cannabis, while neither of the GOP contenders responded, Eames said.

“It was about bringing that awareness to our audience that not only is there a big difference between pro- and anti-cannabis candidates, but there’s even differences within the pro,” Eames explained in an interview earlier this week. “With the current governor leaving, we were very interested to know from candidates: Where do you stand on cannabis?”

The three Democrats sat for interviews that stretched nearly an hour each, touching on provisions such as home cultivation, THC concentration limits, whether the state itself should oversee cannabis sales, whether the number of retailers should be capped at a certain number and the degree to which policies should protect small businesses from competition by multi-state operators.

Earlier this year, New Hampshire lawmakers spent months working to build consensus on a Republican-led legalization bill, but at the last minute, lawmakers in the House, led by a handful of vocal Democrats, voted to table what they described as a fundamentally flawed proposal that was tailored to meet the governor’s approval. Many observers believe the future of cannabis reform in the state in coming years now rests largely on who replaces Sununu—who hesitantly supported the change.

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Matt Simon, director of public and government relations at medical marijuana provider GraniteLeaf Cannabis, watched all three video interviews with the Democratic candidates and said that overall, he believes that if any of the three Democrats win the general election, “New Hampshire will be in a great position to legalize cannabis in 2025.”

A poll released this summer showed 61 support of New Hampshire residents support the legalization bill that almost passed this year—just a few percentage points below the 65 percent support that respondents to a separate poll said they have for legalization generally.

“I think they realize by now that the water’s warm,” Simon said of the Democratic candidates. “There’s no reason not to jump in the pool of not just whispering that you’re OK with cannabis, but being proud to say that you support cannabis legalization—and not cannabis legalization, but a thoughtful approach to cannabis legalization.”

He added: “Something like that would not have happened years ago.”

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

Both Eames and Simon noted that, in contrast to the bill this year that would have legalized marijuana through a system of franchise stores overseen by the state Liquor Commission, Craig—who currently leads in the polls among the Democrats—said she opposed putting the Liquor Commission at the helm of the new 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.

“It seems like she thought a lot about this,” said Eames, whose own view of how New Hampshire should legalize centers on a private, competitive, free-market approach.

While the GOP candidates didn’t show up for NHCANN’s interviews, they recently told the local Concord Monitor that they don’t think New Hampshire should enact legalization.

“I don’t think it’s the right direction,” Ayotte, a former U.S. senator and state attorney general, told the publication.

Morse, a former president of the state Senate, said he’s “never supported it, and I don’t support it now.”

“New Hampshire really isn’t ready to legalize marijuana,” he said.

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Among the Democrats, Kiper—who currently has the least support, according to polls—said he’s open to finding the best, most feasible way to get legalization across the finish line, whether or not that means a state-run model overseen by the Liquor Commission.

A chief focus of Kiper’s is how tax money from the legal industry would be spent. He opposes that revenue going to the state’s general fund, instead preferring it fund housing initiatives in the state.

Kiper said he supports a number of NHCANN-favored provisions, including allowing outdoor cultivation by growers—currently outlawed in the existing medical marijuana system—and direct sales from growers to consumers.

He said he backs home cultivation for adults and would be open to discussing the number of plants allowed, though he’s also said he thinks home cultivation should require a permit. And Kiper expressed willingness to put limits on the concentration of THC in state-legal marijuana products, though he said he’d prefer to see more data first.

Notably, Kiper also said he’d at some point be supportive of cannabis consumption lounges, businesses where adults could use marijuana products in a social setting.

Eames acknowledged that while interviewees didn’t spend much time probing questions of social equity and cannabis, Kiper, along with the other Democrats, said they’d like to see some sort of legal relief for people with past marijuana convictions. Kiper himself said he’d specifically support restitution payments for people who’d spent substantial time in prison for selling marijuana.

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In between Craig and Kiper in the polls is Cinde Warmington, an attorney, former lobbyist and member of the state Executive Council. Warmington told NHCANN that she’s been an advocate in the state for medical legalization as well as decriminalization of marijuana.

As for legalization, she said she prefers a model that would create opportunities for small farmers and reforms that would allow them to receive crop insurance. She also said she’s open to direct-to-consumer sales by farmers and outdoor cultivation.

Warmington said she hasn’t yet come to a conclusion on how the legal market should be structured, but she emphasized that she’s open to input. And, contrary to a demand from Sununu, she said she believed the state should have more than the 15 retail stores that would have been licensed under this year’s bill.

The three Democrats also spoke to their competing views of legalization in debate Wednesday hosted by WMUR-TV.

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As for the Republican candidates, the topic of legalization came up in a debate earlier in the week, also hosted by WMUR.

“The polls show the majority of Granite Staters support legalization,” noted moderator Adam Sexton. “Why are you OK with leaving tax revenue on the table by not legalizing cannabis?”

Ayotte responded: “The states that have built their budgets on this is really a fallacy. We have to ask ourselves what is best for the quality of life of people of New Hampshire.”

She’s met people in recovery who told her that legalization isn’t the right path, Ayotte said, adding that she believes that “when you legalize something, you are sending a different message to our young people.”

She also claimed marijuana legalization would worsen the state’s youth mental health crisis and increase traffic deaths due to impaired driving.

Morse said he’s also heard warnings of the negative consequences of legalization.

“In touring the state of New Hampshire, I haven’t run into anyone that’s in charge of a rehab facility that has said this is the right answer,” he said.

Morse said that on the campaign trail, a mother asked him about his stance on legalization.

“I said I’m against legalizing it, and she brought up her phone and she showed me a picture of her son, and she said, ‘I can tell you that marijuana was what started my son to go down this track. And he’s dead,’” the candidate said. “And I really believe that. We hear that time after time on the campaign trail that legalizing will take us a step too far.”

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In an earlier debate on the show Good Morning NH with Jack Heath, Ayotte said that “we have marijuana, and certainly I support that.”

“When people make the argument to me that all of our neighbors are doing it, so we should do it, that’s never the argument that I think is the right way for New Hampshire,” she said. “We’re different.”

Said Morse: “As we toured the state in the last year and a half, it’s pretty obvious that as you talk to rehabs and all the different groups who are trying to help people through addiction, legalizing marijuana was a huge concern for them.”

“New Hampshire really isn’t ready to legalize marijuana,” he said. “As governor, I wouldn’t be legalizing recreational marijuana, and I’d be working to help the people that have addiction now, because I think we do have problems.”

While there’s little room between the two Republicans—and although Democrats differ largely on finer-grained policy issues that many voters may not yet be focused on—Simon at GraniteLeaf said he thinks that as the primaries pass and attention shifts to the general election, marijuana legalization could become a bigger issue for voters.

“I think after the primary, it’s going to be a huge contrast and could emerge as a major election issue in November,” he said. “We’ll see.”

Since the end of this year’s legislative session, Sununu has approved some more minor marijuana reforms. Perhaps most notably, he signed into a law a significant medical marijuana expansion bill that will 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 comes 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.

Sununu separately vetoed a bill passed by lawmakers that would have allowed medical marijuana businesses to open second cultivation locations, including in greenhouses. Under current law, ATCs in New Hampshire are required to grow marijuana in secure, indoor locations. The use of semi-outdoor structures, including greenhouses, is prohibited.

In his veto statement, Sununu said the bill “provides scant detail regarding safety, security and location requirements.”

Democrats’ move to table the broader legalization bill near the tail end of the legislative session sparked accusations by some that the 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, with many pointing to the state-run system, limit on the number of retailers and other restrictions they said were unacceptable.

New Hampshire lawmakers worked extensively on marijuana reform issues a year earlier 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 a 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.

The Senate also defeated a more conventional House-passed legalization bill last year, HB 639, despite its bipartisan support.

Last May, the House also defeated marijuana legalization language that was included in a Medicaid expansion bill. And the Senate 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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Photo courtesy of Philip Steffan.