New Hampshire Lawmakers Consider Several New Cannabis Bills As Legislative Session Gets Underway

Lawmakers in New Hampshire this week held preliminary hearings on a handful of new cannabis-related bills, including proposals to legalize adult-use marijuana, allow home cultivation by medical patients and caregivers and annul records around certain past crimes.

On Thursday, the House Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee considered five bills on the issue. That followed a separate Wednesday hearing on another five bills in the House Health, Human Services and Elderly Affairs Committee.

Notably, both of the separate legalization plans considered would allow only personal use and possession instead of seeking to establish regulated commercial cannabis markets.

HB 198, led by Rep. Jared Sullivan (D), would legalize the use and possession of up to two ounces of cannabis flower by adults 21 and older, and up to 10 grams of cannabis concentrate.

“Many people in our society have grown to accept the consumption of cannabis by responsible adults, but it remains illegal in New Hampshire,” Sullivan told the Criminal Justice and Safety Committee. At the same time, he said, lawmakers in the state have repeatedly tripped over the “stumbling block” of how to regulate a commercial cannabis industry.

“The goal of this is simply to legalize this and allow for reasonable quantities of possession,” Sullivan said.

People smoking or vaping marijuana in public would be guilty of a violation for the first two offenses, with an initial fine of $100 that would climb to $500 on the second offense. A third or subsequent offense within a five-year period of the first violation could be charged as a misdemeanor.

Sullivan said those provisions were the result of conversations with colleagues who were concerned about public nuisances and secondhand smoke.

If the bill becomes law, he said, the legislature could later return to the issue to address how to regulate possible retail sales.

“Vermont did the same thing,” he pointed out. “They actually legalized it, and a few years later, came back with a regulatory framework.”

Rep. Heath Howard (D), a co-sponsor of the bill, acknowledged that the approach “is not my preferred method of legalization,” but he described it as a “basic compromise that maintains the public norms while also giving people new individual liberties to use on private property.”

Two legalization advocates also spoke in favor of the legislation: Jim Riddle, a board member of the New Hampshire Cannabis Association, and Matt Simon, director of public and government relations at the medical marijuana provider GraniteLeaf.

“There are two things I like about this bill right off the top: It doesn’t create any new bureaucracy and it doesn’t cost taxpayers any money,” Riddle told lawmakers.

He also criticized a separate legalization bill considered by lawmakers last session as a “Soviet-style, state-run cannabis monopoly.” That proposal would have put the New Hampshire Liquor Commission in charge of retail marijuana sales through a system of franchised stores.

Simon, meanwhile, said that Sullivan’s simple legalization proposal would have little impact on the state’s existing medical marijuana operators, known in New Hampshire as alternative treatment centers (ATCs).

“This bill doesn’t have anything to do with the therapeutic cannabis program. It wouldn’t have any impact on the ATCs. We support it as a matter of principle,” he said.

“One thing New Hampshire has learned in the last couple years is that cannabis legalization is not a yes or no question,” Simon continued. “But every actual cannabis legalization bill contains, typically, dozens of policy choices, some of which may be good or bad, all of which are debatable. And many bills get derailed over people not being able to agree on those dozens of policy choices.”

“If a complex bill goes to the other chamber,” he warned lawmakers, “there will be dozens of policy choices that could derail that other bill. If this simple bill goes to the other chamber, it really is a yes or no question: Do you think adults in the Live Free or Die State should be punished for possession? So I think this is a good bill, both strategically as well as politically.”

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

Other cannabis bills heard by the committee Thursday include the following:

• HB 75, from Rep. Kevin Verville (R), also takes a simple approach to legalization. It would remove penalties around the use and possession of marijuana but would not establish a licensed commercial market or broader regulatory scheme. People under 21 would be guilty of a violation if found possessing or using the substance, and anyone under 18 would be referred to a screening for substance use disorders. Adults who use marijuana in a public place would also be guilty of a violation.
• HB 196, from Rep. Jonah Wheeler (D), to annul past arrests and convictions around simple marijuana possession. Annulment would cover offenses for possession of up to two ounces of cannabis and five grams of hashish or “an amount of cannabis that is legal under New Hampshire law for adults 21 and older to possess,” whichever is higher.
• HB 190, from Howard, to increase the possession limit of medical marijuana by patients and caregivers to four ounces, up from the current two. Existing 10-day patient purchase limits would also increase from two ounces up to four.
• HB 380, from Rep. Suzanne Vail (D), which would adjust penalties around sales of medical marijuana to people who are not qualifying patients or caregivers.

During discussion of the annulments bill, Wheeler noted that the state has already decriminalized possession of up to three-quarters of an ounce of cannabis but continues to criminalize people for past offenses.

“These are people that have served their sentence, done the time, come out, and now the charge that they were incarcerated for is no longer being prosecuted,” he said. “But they’re still unable to get forward in life—which is the point of the criminal justice system, the rehabilitation side of it—because this charge is still on their record.”

A day earlier New Hampshire’s House Health, Human Services and Elderly Affairs Committee heard another five cannabis related bills. Perhaps most notably, one—HB 53, from Rep. Wendy Thomas (D)—would allow state-registered patients and caregivers to grow marijuana at home.

Specifically, qualified individuals could grow up to three mature plants and three immature plants, as well as 12 seedlings. They could also possess up to eight ounces of usable cannabis from those plants and and any amount of unusable cannabis. Landlords would be able to prohibit cultivation in rented properties.

Thomas noted in an email to Marijuana Moment that it’s the third time she’s introduced medical cannabis homegrow legislation during her time as a lawmaker.

“It will most likely pass the House,” she predicted. “After that—who knows?”

Other cannabis bills heard by the committee Wednesday include the following:

• HB 205, from Howard, which would exempt veterans from the state’s $50 certification fee when obtaining medical marijuana credentials.
• HB 301, from Vail, to allow ATCs to establish additional cultivation locations, which may include greenhouses. Currently all growing must happen indoors, with greenhouse cultivation prohibited.
• HB 54, sponsored by Thomas, would permit ATCs to operate as for-profit entities. Under current state law, they must be organized as not-for-profit businesses.
• HB 51, also from Thomas, which would permit ATCs to purchase non-intoxicating hemp products, for example CBD, for use in medical marijuana products. It would further eliminate cannabis seeds from the state’s definition of therapeutic cannabis.

Thomas told Marijuana Moment that many of the proposals are intended to drive down prices for patients and caregivers.

The hemp bill, for example, “would potentially decrease price and make more higher-CBD and other hemp cannabinoid products available,” she said.

As for allowing ATCs to reorganize as for-profit entities, Thomas explained that the current requirement they be not-for-profit disqualifies operators from certain funding opportunities and requires they follow nonprofit-specific regulations that drive up costs.

Karen O’Keefe, director of state policies for Marijuana Policy Project, said the group supports most of the reforms introduced this session but is focused primarily on the annulment bill (HB 196) and Sullivan’s simple legalization proposal HB 198.

“The House has passed most or all of the good bills before, and I hope it will again,” she told Marijuana Moment in an email.

Simon, for his part, said in an email to Marijuana Moment that “the political climate does not appear very favorable for cannabis this session, but advocates are confident that many of these bills will at least pass the House and proceed to the Senate.”

“At this point we’re just taking things one bill at a time, one hearing at a time, and doing our best to educate some of our newly elected state legislators,” he said.

A number of this year’s proposals renew efforts already undertaken in past sessions. Last year, for example, lawmakers passed a bill that would have allowed greenhouse cultivation among ATCs, but former Gov. Chris Sununu (R) vetoed it. Lawmakers later failed to override that veto. Past efforts have also sought to allow ATCs to operate for profit and legalize medical marijuana homegrow. And as Wheeler acknowledged at Thursday’s hearing, it’s the second time in as many years he’s introduced an annulments bill.

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As for full legalization, hope among advocates has fallen sharply following last November’s election. The state’s new governor, Kelly Ayotte (R)—a former U.S. senator and state attorney general—said repeatedly on the campaign trail that she would oppose efforts at adult-use legalization if elected.

Rep. Jason Osborne (R), the House majority leader and a prior sponsor of legislation to legalize cannabis, said earlier this month that the situation means it could be years before New Hampshire has another realistic attempt to legalize and regulate the plant.

“We had an opportunity with the last governor to put that issue behind us, and frankly, we blew it,” Osborne said in an interview with a local ABC affiliate. “So I don’t imagine us coming back to that for another decade, probably.”

In a later email to Marijuana Moment, the lawmaker clarified that it might not be “a decade” before lawmakers again take up cannabis legalization, but it also won’t be anytime soon.

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

New Hampshire lawmakers nearly passed legislation last session that would have legalized and regulated marijuana for adults. The Republican-sponsored measure—one that Sununu 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.

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.

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Photo courtesy of Mike Latimer.

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