Members of a New Hampshire Senate committee on Tuesday heard testimony on a series of House-passed bills regarding marijuana—from allowing medical patients to grow cannabis at home to full-blown, unregulated legalization—but opted not to take immediate action on any of the legislation.

The hearing comes ahead of expected House floor action on additional drug reform measures later this week, including a separate legalization proposal and a plan to decriminalize psilocybin.

Four cannabis related bills were before the Senate Judiciary Committee, including two from Rep. Wendy Thomas (D) related to medical dispensaries and homegrow, one from Rep. Jonah Wheeler (D) to ease the state process for annulling past cannabis crimes and another from Rep. Kevin Verville (R) that would legalize marijuana among adults 21 and older and leave sales of the drug unregulated.

Thomas’s HB 51 would allow the New Hampshire’s existing medical marijuana dispensaries—known in the state as alternative treatment centers (ATCs)—to buy nonintoxicating cannabinoid products from commercial producers and, after lab testing, use them in products sold to state-registered patients. That activity would be regulated by the Department of Health and Human Services.

Notably, the bill would not apply to hemp-derived THC but only to non-intoxicating cannabinoids. Examples given were cannabidiol (CBD) and cannabigerol (CBG).

“The way the law is currently written, an ATC must produce all of its own cannabinoids in-house,” Thomas told senators at the hearing. “This makes sense when the law was originally passed in 2013, but today hemp is federally legal, and there are many legal suppliers of CBD and other non-intoxicating cannabinoids.”

She said the change would allow ATCs to produce some products “less expensively, which should result in these products becoming more affordable for New Hampshire patients.”

Jerry Knirk, chair of the state Therapeutic Cannabis Medical Oversight Board, spoke in support of the proposal, telling panel members that ATCs already sell many products that are high in CBD and low in THC.

“As a result, they have a significant need for CBD and for other non-intoxicating cannabinoids to be able to be used in their products,” he said, “but they have difficulty producing enough CBD and other non-intoxicating cannabinoids” in light of the high security costs associated with growing plants high in THC.

“Since industrial hemp can be grown commercially, just out in the field, without the high level of security,” Knirk added, “it’s a very good, economical source for CBD and other non-intoxicating cannabinoids.”

An ATC representative, Matt Simon, director of public and government relations at the medical marijuana provider GraniteLeaf Cannabis, told lawmakers that “we have to grow under high intensity lights indoors, and that is extremely cost-imposing.”

“Meanwhile, these products are already legal and widely available,” he said.

Simon also emphasized that while people in New Hampshire can already widely access hemp-derived CBD, those federally legal products are typically unregulated.

“If they have been lab tested, it was voluntarily, and there’s nobody checking those labels to make sure they’re entirely accurate,” he said. Under HB 51, “what we’d be doing would be selling products to patients using lab-tested, hemp-derived, non-intoxicating cannabinoids. We believe we’d be able to lower prices for those products, and that would make patients happy, it would make medical providers happy and it would not create any new risks for New Hampshire.”

Pat Sullivan, a representative for the New Hampshire Association of Chiefs of Police, said the group opposes the bill because of legal concerns around the distribution of cannabinoids across state lines.

“We have a concern about the transportation between the states on this, and we believe it’s just a simple expansion of the marijuana legalization effort,” he said. “And I’ll leave it at that.”

In response to a question by lawmakers about what part of the plan was illegal, Sullivan responded that it “talks about the manufacture of cannabis concentrate and cannabis-infused products.”

Thomas’s other bill, HB 53, would allow state-registered medical marijuana patients and caregivers to grow cannabis 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.

Growers would have to keep the plants in secure locations, away from public view or unauthorized access, that would need to be reported to the state. Landlords could further prohibit cultivation in rented properties.

It’s the third time Thomas, a medical marijuana patient herself, has introduced such a measure during her time as a lawmaker.

“House Bill 53 helps low income, immobile or home-bound patients who need medical cannabis to be able to grow their own medicine or get help doing so,” she told the panel, noting that there are just seven dispensaries across the whole state, and not all patients have vehicles or affordable ways to travel.

She noted that neighboring states Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Vermont all allow patients to grow plants at home. And she pointed out that the Therapeutic Cannabis Medical Oversight Board “voted unanimously to support this bill. It is seen as an economical way to support therapeutic cannabis patients.”

Critics, including Sullivan from the Association of Chiefs of Police and a representative from the advocacy group Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM) opposed the measure, asserting that it lacks oversight of patients and caregivers.

Knirk, the Therapeutic Cannabis Medical Oversight Board chair, pushed back against claims by those critics, for example one from Sullivan contending that caregivers could charge $2,000 an hour under the bill for their labor.

Knirk noted the bill caps reimbursable costs by a caregiver at $500—meaning for things like materials and electricity—but that labor itself would be “a labor of love.”

“You can ask for compensation from their person from your caregiving, up to $500,” he said. “It doesn’t mean you can tack on $2,000 an hour for labor on top of that. That is not what this says.”

As to claims of a lack of oversight, Knirk said that’s because existing law already prohibits cannabis sales by anyone other than state-licensed ATCs.

“There is nothing in this bill that addresses the sale of cannabis because that already exists in statute,” he said. “We don’t need to have it in this bill, because it’s there.”

Simon, who noted that he’d lobbied lawmakers in other New England states on cannabis issues, described home cultivation by patients to the panel as “the least controversial aspect of cannabis legalization or cannabis medical cannabis policy.”

“I want to be very clear about one thing: Home cultivation of cannabis is a felony in New Hampshire right now,” he said, adding that growing “one ounce or more of marijuana is a felony for which you can be arrested and you can do serious time.”

“Our patients feel strongly that they should be free to cultivate as their counterparts in every other New England state are able,” he said. “They’re mad that they can’t do it here. Sometimes they yell at us. And we’re here to stand up for their rights.”

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

A third bill at Tuesday’s hearing, HB 196, would expand the state’s annulment process of past arrests and convictions around simple marijuana possession.

“Currently, people have to go and pay a $300 payments to get a request for their annulment,” sponsor Wheeler told the panel. “This legislation would amend the statute to allow people to simply request that they can get an annulment hearing without having to have the onerous $300 charge.”

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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.

People in New Hampshire with criminal cannabis records face denial opportunities like jobs, loans or military service, he said. “So for a mistake that you might have made in your teenage years, you are prevented from moving forward in life and rehabilitating yourself.”

Originally the bill would have made annulment automatic, Wheeler pointed out at the hearing. The amended version, which relies on a request from an affected individual “wouldn’t be onerous for the Department of Justice and their staff, which the original bill was,” he said.

Law enforcement generally opposed the change. One representative of the Association of Chiefs of Police said their “concern is this will come up every couple years, every year or so, continually wiping away any consequences for people who are habitually violating the law.”

The measure could also create confusion in cases where plea bargains don’t specify the amount of marijuana at issue, he said, noting that current law requires petitioners for annulment to prove that the amount was below a certain threshold.

The final bill heard Tuesday was HB 75, which would remove state penalties around cannabis-related conduct for adults 21 and older. Unlike legalization measures in other states, however, it would not establish a licensed commercial market or a broader regulatory scheme.

The proposal includes no limits on marijuana possession or cultivation. And despite its lack of a regulatory structure for a commercial industry, it would carve out marijuana from the state’s laws against illicit drug sales.

Minors would continue to be barred from using marijuana under the bill. 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.

Verville himself was not present at the hearing.

Even if Verville’s simple legalization bill proceeds to the desk of New Hampshire Gov. Kelly Ayotte (R), she’s signaled intentions to veto any legalization proposal. A former U.S. senator and state attorney general, Ayotte said repeatedly on the campaign trail last year that she would oppose efforts at adult-use legalization.

The hearing comes as lawmakers in the House of Representatives prepare for floor action this week on separate drug reform legislation.

One measure, HB 528, from Verville, would decriminalize use and possession of psilocybin. As passed by a House committee earlier this month, the legislation imposes some penalties, but they’re significantly lower than the state’s current felony-level prohibition.

Under the new amendment, a first psilocybin offense would be a violation, subject to a fine of $100 or less. Second and third offenses would be class B misdemeanors, carrying fines of up to $500 and $1,000, respectively, but also with no risk of jail time.

Fourth and subsequent offenses would still be classified as felonies.

Another proposal—HB 198, from Rep. Jared Sullivan (D)—would take a simple approach to marijuana legalization, allowing only possession and use but not establishing a commercial market.

If approved, the measure would allow adults 21 and older to possess up to two ounces of marijuana flower, 10 grams of concentrate and up to 2,000 milligrams of THC in other cannabis products.

Retail sales of marijuana products, along with home cultivation, would remain illegal under the plan. Consuming marijuana on public land would also be prohibited.

Another bill—HB 190, from Rep. Heath Howard (D)—would increase the possession limit of medical marijuana by patients and caregivers, raising it to four ounces from the current two. Existing 10-day patient purchase limits would also increase from two ounces up to four.

New Hampshire lawmakers nearly passed legislation last session 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 proposal. 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. Nearly that same share of residents (61 percent) said at the time that they also supported last session’s failed legalization bill, HB 1633.

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Photo courtesy of Mike Latimer.