The New Hampshire Senate Has Rejected Every Marijuana Bill Passed By The House This Session
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The New Hampshire Senate on Thursday moved to scuttle two marijuana measures already passed by the House, including a proposal to allow medical cannabis businesses to cultivate in greenhouses and a separate bill to expand the state’s annulment process for past arrest and conviction records.
Senators also voted to delay consideration until next month of a separate bill that would decriminalize small amounts of psilocybin.
The actions reflect the chamber’s broad hostility toward drug reform measures this session. While a number of bills cleared the House of Representatives—including to legalize adult-use marijuana and allow medical marijuana patients to grow cannabis at home—nearly all have gone on to die in the Senate.
“These outcomes are disappointing, but unfortunately, they aren’t surprising,” Matt Simon, director of public and government relations at the medical marijuana provider GraniteLeaf Cannabis, told Marijuana Moment.
Earlier this year, Simon said it appeared “that a few senators just want to kill every bill that deals with cannabis policy, no matter how modest and non-controversial.”
All told, senators have now moved to table or kill eight House-passed measures related to marijuana this session.
One of the bills taken up at Thursday’s Senate floor session—HB 301, from Rep. Suzanne Vail (D)—would have allowed medical marijuana operators (known in the state as alternative treatment centers, or ATCs) to each establish a single additional cultivation location, including in a greenhouse.
Under current law, all growing by ATCs must happen indoors, with greenhouse cultivation prohibited.
Though House lawmakers passed the bill in February, a Senate committee earlier this month marked the proposal “inexpedient to legislate,” effectively recommending it be abandoned. On Thursday, senators voted to table it.
Simon noted that in New Hampshire, there’s strong support for broader legalization of marijuana, “so it’s hard to understand why letting ATCs grow in secure greenhouses is even remotely controversial.”
(Disclosure: Simon supports Marijuana Moment’s work via a monthly pledge on Patreon.)
The Senate also moved to mark another bill—HB 196, from Rep. Jonah Wheeler (D)—inexpedient to legislate, meaning it’s effectively dead for the session. That proposal would have expanded state’s annulment process of past arrests and convictions around simple marijuana possession.
One of the only remaining drug reform measures still in play in the Senate is the psilocybin decriminalization plan, HB 528 from Rep. Kevin Verville (R).
Under the proposal, which passed the House of Representatives in March, a first psilocybin offense would be a violation, subject to a fine of $100 or less. Second and third psilocybin offenses would be class B misdemeanors, carrying fines of up to $500 and $1,000, respectively, but with no risk of jail time. Fourth and subsequent offenses would remain classified as felonies.
Prior to its passage by a Senate committee earlier this month, however, lawmakers attached an amendment to insert into the bill mandatory minimum sentences for certain fentanyl-related offenses and for distribution of drugs that result in a user’s death.
Verville told Marijuana Moment at the time that he was “not a big fan” of the new amendment but saw it as a necessary compromise to move the psychedelics proposal forward.
The Senate, he explained, “is not a big fan of the psilocybin bill,” while the House “is not a big fan of mandatory minimums.”
“The making of sausage is not for the faint of heart, to be sure!” he wrote in an email. “Legislative sausage required compromise and give and take.”
If the bill is enacted, sales and distribution of the psychedelic substance would still be illegal, as the reform would apply only to “a person 18 years of age or older who obtains, purchases, transports, possesses, or uses psilocybin.”
As originally introduced, the legislation would have completely removed penalties around obtaining, purchasing, transporting, possessing or using psilocybin, effectively legalizing it on a noncommercial basis. However a House committee amended the bill before unanimously advancing it in March.
Verville previously told Marijuana Moment that the House’s passage of his psilocybin bill was “an historic, albeit small first step on our journey to correct 60 years of demonstrably failed policy on psychedelics.”
Though the Senate is now set to take up the measure on June 5, it’s “still a long way from the finish line,” Verville said.
“The Senate will have to pass the amended bill, as will the House,” he said in an earlier email. “IF we can get both bodies to agree, then the future will rest in the hands of our governor. I pray that the bill as amended will pass both bodies and become NH law.”
At the earlier Senate committee hearing where the fentanyl provision was added, Sen. Tara Reardon (D) asked colleagues if the idea was that “we’re trading” the House-favored move to reduce psilocybin penalties in exchange “for enhanced penalties” on fentanyl.
“One might say that, yes,” replied Sen. Bill Gannon (R), the committee chair.
The fentanyl penalties were part of a separate bill that passed the Senate in January and has remained pending before the House Judiciary Committee for months.
Separately, the New Hampshire Senate earlier this month narrowly voted to table a House-passed marijuana legalization bill, effectively ending this year’s renewed effort to end cannabis prohibition in the “Live Free or Die” state.
The chamber voted 12–10 to table the measure, HB 198, from Rep. Jared Sullivan (D). It had previously passed the House of Representatives in March, but weeks later the Senate Judiciary Committee recommended the proposal be rejected.
If enacted, the bill would have legalized noncommercial possession and use of marijuana among adults 21 and older, permitting adults to have up to two ounces of marijuana flower, 10 grams of concentrate and up to 2,000 milligrams of THC in other cannabis products.
Sullivan’s proposal was a pared-down version of a legalization measure lawmakers nearly passed last year, under then-Gov. Chris Sununu (R), but it did not include that bill’s regulated commercial system—a controversial issue that ultimately derailed the earlier effort.
Recent state polling suggests New Hampshire residents strongly favor cannabis legalization. Late last month, a Granite State Poll, from the University of New Hampshire’s States of Opinion Project, found 70 percent support for the reform, including majorities of Democrats, Republicans and independents.
“Support for legalization has increased slightly since June 2024 (65%) and remains considerably higher than in the mid-2010s,” it added. “Majorities of Democrats (84%), independents (72%), and Republicans (55%) support legalizing marijuana for personal use.”
Last legislative session, New Hampshire lawmakers nearly passed a bill that would have legalized and regulated marijuana for adults—a proposal that then-Gov. Chris Sununu (R) had indicated he’d support. But infighting over how the market would be set up ultimately scuttled that measure. 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.
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Photo courtesy of Philip Steffan.
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