A months-long push to stiffen penalties for fentanyl crimes in New Hampshire appears back on track.
That’s after a second round of House and Senate negotiations on Wednesday yielded a deal to establish mandatory minimum sentences for people charged with possessing large amounts of fentanyl, or for providing somebody with a dose of any drug that kills them.
Under the compromise proposal, anyone found guilty of possessing 20 grams or more of fentanyl would serve at least 3½ years in prison. That minimum sentence would climb to 7 years for people found guilty of possessing 50 grams or more.
Anyone who dispensed a lethal dose of any drug would, meanwhile face a minimum of 5 years in prison.
Backers of the stricter penalties — including Gov. Kelly Ayotte and Senate Republicans — argue that New Hampshire has fallen behind other states when it comes to handing out tough punishments for drug crimes, and that the state’s ongoing struggle to contain opioid use warrants a hardline approach. But that view is less prevalent in the House, where leaders in both parties have tended to be skeptical of mandatory minimums.
That predisposition was on display earlier this year when the House first took up the Senate’s proposal. The House Criminal Justice Committee initially reworked the bill by adding a provision to give judges discretion to ignore the mandatory minimum requirement in some circumstances. Then, when the bill came up for a floor vote in the House, lawmakers tacked on a drug policy that the Senate had already rejected: the decriminalization of psilocybin mushrooms.
The mushroom provision derailed the first round of compromise talks on mandatory minimums Tuesday.
"The Senate's position on psilocybin was clear earlier this year, and we are not going to agree to that part of the bill.” Sen. Bill Gannon of Sandown said as talks broke down.
“That's okay,” replied Rep. Terry Roy, who chairs the House Criminal Justice Committee. ”We’ll be back in the fall and can look at it again.”
But it didn’t take that long. On Wednesday, negotiators were back at the table, with Republican Sen. Darryl Abbas as Gannon’s replacement.
Abbas was quick to propose a middle ground: the fentanyl mandatory minimums would remain, but in exchange, the Senate would agree to make a first-offense possession of up to three-quarters of an ounce of psilocybin mushrooms a misdemeanor. It's currently a felony. The Senate would also drop the mandatory minimum sentence for dispensing a drug that results in a death from 10 years in prison to five.
“This is a compromise, and right now the biggest drug or problem the state is facing is fentanyl,” Abbas said. “With psilocybin, you can't physically overdose, at least within reason.”
House negotiators were quick to accept the deal.
“Stronger actions have to be taken with fentanyl, there is no doubt about it," said Rep. Kevin Verville of Deerfield, who sponsored the original bill to decriminalize psilocybin. “That’s why I support this language we discussed.”
The lone Democratic negotiator, Sen. Tara Reardon of Concord, opposes mandatory minimums, and said she would not sign off of the deal.
But the compromise will be taken up by both the House and Senate next week, where it stands a good chance of passage.
