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Debate Continues Over Marijuana Legalization In New Hampshire

Allegra Boverman for NHPR

A House committee this week recommended against  a bill to legalize pot in the state - but advocates on both sides are continuing the debate.

Speaking today on NHPR'sThe Exchange, Kate Frey, vice president of advocacy for New Futures, compares the marijuana industry to the big tobacco and big alcohol industries. 

“It’s a profit-driven industry,” Frey says. “And once ‘Big Marijuana’ moves in, just like ‘Big Alcohol,’ then you have pot shops in your neighborhood, you have highly potent edible products targeted toward kids."
 
 
State Rep. Frank Sapareto, who supports legalization, dismisses the concerns. He cites a UNH poll earlier this year that 68 percent support legalizing pot for recreational use.

 

He says marijuana can be safely regulated in a way similar to alcohol.

 

LISTEN to The Exchange show on the marijuana debate.

 

The debate will continue into 2018, including a legislative study of possible legalization, regulation, and taxation. That commission meets next on Nov. 27.

Sapareto says the study commission was stacked with critics. It’s not required to produce a report until late 2018.

Marijuana legalization is only a matter of time in New Hampshire, according to Sapareto. And he believes the federal government, which still sees it as a schedule 1 drug, will soften its position.

Marijuana is legal in eight states and the District of Columbia, and all were through the ballot box, by voter referendum, said Karmen Hanson, a policy director of the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Sapareto says New Hampshire will be an island in New England, because neighboring states, and Canada, have moved to legalization.

“All those states that have no legalized it,” he says. “It’s just a wave coming. It’s a tsunami.”

Highlights from The Exchange show:

  • Hanson, at the NCSL, says Colorado, one of the states where recreational marijuana is legal, sees about 2 percent of its state revenues from pot.
  • A man from a manufacturer in Barrington called into the show to say legalization might make it harder for companies, such as his, to find people able to work shifts.
  • New Hampshire has a state law for medical marijuana. Thestate embraced “decriminalization,”removal of the penalty for possession of small amounts of marijuana, earlier this year.

 

Dan is a long-time New Hampshire journalist who has written for outlets including Foster's Daily Democrat, The Citizen of Laconia, The Boston Globe, and The Eagle-Tribune. He comes to NHPR from the New Hampshire Union Leader, where he reported on state, local, and national politics.
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