After repeated legalization hang-ups, New Hampshire Space lawmakers are providing their colleagues within the Senate more than one reform expenses this consultation to look what sticks.
Representatives within the decrease chamber voted, 208-125, to cross a easy adult-use legalization invoice on March 26 that may permit the ones 21 years and older to own hashish; on the other hand, the invoice refrains from setting up a business market. It’s the second one adult-use legalization invoice the Space handed this yr.
The most recent regulation, Space Invoice 198, backed through Rep. Jared Sullivan, D-Bethlehem, would permit adults to own 2 oz of hashish, 10 grams of listen or 2,000 milligrams of THC. It will now not allow house cultivation, leaving state citizens no felony choices to acquire hashish or hashish merchandise—transporting a Agenda I drug throughout state traces is federally unlawful.
H.B. 198 is very similar to regulation that Space individuals handed on Feb. 20 by means of a voice vote. That regulation, H.B. 75, backed through Rep. Kevin Verville, R-Deerfield, targets to take away and regulate consequences for adults who eat or possess hashish.
All over Wednesday’s Space flooring debate on Sullivan’s invoice, Sullivan defined why he persevered to pursue H.B. 198 in mild of Verville’s in the past handed H.B. 75.
“I did communicate to a couple senators who idea this type, which is somewhat other than the only we’ve already handed a couple of weeks in the past, there are a couple of guardrails and one of the crucial senators mentioned they may well be open to supporting it with a few of these guardrails, like a prohibition on public intake,” Sullivan mentioned.
Whilst 93% of Space Democrats and 39% of Space Republicans who forged votes supported Sullivan’s H.B. 198 this week, the regulation faces a much less transparent trail within the Senate.
New Hampshire was once at the verge of turning into the twenty fifth state to legalize adult-use hashish remaining yr, when the Senate handed and amended model of a Space-originated invoice, however the two chambers collided over a state-run “franchise type” for dispensaries and couldn’t get to the bottom of their variations in a convention committee.
Former Gov. Chris Sununu indicated that he was once open to signing a legalization invoice remaining consultation provided that it integrated a state-run type.
In the meantime, Gov. Kelly Ayotte, who took administrative center in January, mentioned alongside her marketing campaign path that she had little interest in signing any hashish legalization expenses.
Rep. Jennifer Rhodes, R-Winchester, who adversarial H.B. 198 on March 26, identified the unlikelihood of Sullivan’s invoice, or any adult-use legalization invoice, turning into regulation this consultation.
“For so long as I’ve been right here, we’re up right here discussing marijuana,” she mentioned. “We stay passing them out of this frame. They move around the side road; they move nowhere. To my figuring out, there has now not been a unmarried invoice that has made it to the governor’s administrative center. I know that each and every unmarried time we cross one, one thing, regardless of how minute, comes up. … I do know I’m going to vote no as a result of I do know the opposite frame’s going to vote no, and I do know the governor isn’t going to signal it.”
Sullivan mentioned he agreed that it may well be a tall ask for the governor to signal his invoice, however Space individuals shouldn’t permit a separate department of presidency or a unique legislative chamber dictate their votes.
“I don’t suppose we will have to kill expenses just because we expect they received’t achieve success in every other frame; that’s now not an overly compelling argument to me,” he mentioned. “If we expect it’s proper, then we will have to cross it right here as of late.”
Sullivan is sponsoring every other adult-use hashish invoice this consultation, H.B. 186, which might move the whole distance in now not most effective legalizing intake and ownership but additionally in setting up an authorized, taxed and controlled marketplace for business operators. That invoice stays in committee.
Some of the 24 states to legalize adult-use hashish within the U.S., Vermont to start with handed a invoice in January 2018 that was once restricted to ownership and residential cultivation prior to lawmakers enacted follow-up regulation to determine an authorized program. It took greater than 4 1/2 years prior to launching gross sales.
As well as, Virginia handed an adult-use ownership invoice in April 2021, however lawmakers had been unsuccessful in enacting follow-up regulation for adult-use gross sales ever since: Gov. Glenn Younkin vetoed the most recent strive on March 24, 2025.
Sullivan stated Vermont’s trail to adult-use gross sales on Wednesday, suggesting New Hampshire may take a identical method whilst the state’s bicameral regulation doesn’t see eye-to-eye on parameters for an authorized market.
“After we get it legalized, we will be able to proceed to have that discuss,” he mentioned. “That appears to be the place the sticking issues is. Do we wish it to be a personal industry-based type? Do we wish it to be state-run fashions? This stuff are the place we’re getting more or less stuck up within the weeds, and it sort of feels like the general public agree that we will have to legalize it.”
Even though New Hampshire stays the remaining adult-use legalization holdout in New England, 65% of Granite Staters strengthen reforming rules to permit the ones 21 years and older to get right of entry to hashish, in keeping with a June 2024 survey carried out through the College of New Hampshire.
Underneath present regulation, possessing lower than 3/4 ounce of hashish is a civil penalty, whilst possessing extra is a misdemeanor punishable through 365 days in jail and as much as a $350 high-quality.
“It’s 2025,” Sullivan mentioned. “Let’s forestall arresting other folks and ruining their lives for the ownership of hashish, one thing that many states within the nation have already legalized for ownership and, in maximum puts, on the market.”
