GOP lawmaker: Ayotte lobbied state Senate to kill 2015 marijuana decriminalization bill
A Republican lawmaker who led the fight against marijuana decriminalization in the New Hampshire House says U.S. Sen. Kelly Ayotte lobbied Republicans in the upper chamber to kill a 2015 bill that would have reduced the penalty for possession of small amounts of marijuana.
State Rep. Bill Gannon says he contacted Ayotte after the House overwhelmingly approved House Bill 618, legislation that would have made the possession of half an ounce of marijuana a violation rather than a misdemeanor. “I went to Kelly Ayotte and I talked to her and I said, ‘The Senate could stop this. Can you help me?’ ”
Speaking on the Girard at Large radio show, the Sandown Republican described Ayotte’s response, “She called every Republican senator, or she had her staff do it. She implored them to wait a couple of years and so that helped stop the bill last year.”
As Gannon noted, the Senate tabled the legislation that his House colleagues had approved by a 297-67 vote and it died at the end of the session.
A history of opposition
As state attorney general, Ayotte strongly opposed medical marijuana legislation. In a 2009 letter to lawmakers, she wrote, “characterizing marijuana as a medicine … will send a false and misleading message to New Hampshire residents, our youth in particular, that marijuana is harmless…. The bottom line is that the safety of the drug is highly questionable.”
She restated her opposition during her campaign for the U.S. Senate. “I don’t support medical marijuana,” she told a disabled veteran on the campaign trail. “It should go through, like other painkillers, an FDA process. … It’s an illegal drug in our country and I don’t support it.“
So it’s not the first time Ayotte opposed marijuana reform, nor the first time she has attempted to impose her will on the state legislature after becoming a U.S. senator. Her apparent intervention to help defeat marijuana decriminalization followed a more public lobbying effort to sway state legislators the year before when she, and other party leaders, endorsed Gene Chandler over Bill O’Brien for House speaker.
Though O’Brien narrowly prevailed in the GOP caucus vote, conservative Republicans blamed Ayotte for O’Brien’s defeat when the full House voted instead for compromise candidate Shawn Jasper, who won with an alliance of Democrats and disaffected Republicans.
Dissatisfaction among conservatives led to a primary challenge by former state Sen. Jim Rubens, who has embraced marijuana reform. “Congress should grant states their power under the 10th Amendment to legalize, regulate and tax it as each state may see fit,” he says. “We need to admit that prohibition has failed.”
‘Everybody’s against marijuana this year’
After successfully blocking decriminalization, Gannon is now running for the state Senate in District 23, the seat being vacated by incumbent Sen. Russell Prescott (R-Kingston). Gannon credits the 2015 victory, and Ayotte’s lobbying effort, with turning the tide against marijuana decriminalization in the state.
“This year everybody jumped on board the bandwagon because of all the heroin deaths, the opioid problem,” he said in the radio interview, “and so everybody’s against marijuana this year.”
Scientific surveys indicate otherwise. The latest Granite State Poll, sponsored by WMUR-TV, and conducted by the University of New Hampshire Survey Center, found 72 percent of the state’s adults want marijuana decriminalized or legalized. “[A] majority of Granite Staters support legalizing recreational marijuana in New Hampshire and have for several years,” the pollsters noted.