The state has been slow to make changes to the six-year-old medical market. Meanwhile the state’s three medical cannabis nonprofits are left waiting for the opportunity for new customers as Vermont’s adult use market comes online.
Once again, it appears that adult use legalization in New Hampshire is officially dead for the year. The state’s Senate resoundly rejected, 15-9, the House’s attempt to insert legalized possession and home growing into a Senate bill related to escaped prisoners on May 12.
About 74% of voters in New Hampshire support the legalization of adult use cannabis, according to a recent University of New Hampshire poll.
The vote was not a shocker for advocates who previously worried about any legalization bills’ chances in the conservative senate.
The Senate’s Ways and Means Committee voted 5-0 to kill an adult use legalization measure.
That bill, which is the third since 2019 to pass the House, would still need to pass the state Senate, which was where previous efforts to legalize have died.
“It would probably destroy that program. They might be able to survive by becoming suppliers for the adult used market, but why would anybody stay a patient?”
“I mean, you spend a half a million dollars on a piece of equipment. Let’s say there’s five hundred growers and they’ve got twenty samples each a month and you divide half million by, you know, with a payback of maybe two or three years, you’re still looking at three or four hundred dollars per sample.”
Rhode Island allows medical patients to possess up to 12 adult plants and 12 immature plants at one time.
“It has historically been the Senate that has been less supportive. However, where this bill lives up to New Hampshire’s low-or-no-tax philosophy and provides a property tax reduction for the state’s homeowners we feel it has a better chance than past bills.”
