A House subcommittee in New Hampshire has moved forward with formally adopting changes to a marijuana legalization bill that members initially approved at a hearing last week, setting up the measure for a full House Finance Committee vote on Tuesday.
At a hearing Monday, a finance subcommittee voted 6–3 to integrate two combined sets of amendments to HB 1633, one from the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Erica Layon (R), and one from Rep. Peter Leishman (D), the panel’s chair. The subcommittee then voted 6–3 to report the bill to the full Finance Committee.
While the bill’s amended language is not yet publicly available, the measure in its current form would allow 15 retailers to open statewide—one of a number of requirements that Gov. Chris Sununu (R) said last year that a legalization bill would need to include in order to win his support.
The bill would also strictly limit advertising of marijuana and would impose a 10 percent state charge on adult-use purchases. Medical marijuana patients would be exempt.
Generally Layon’s bill would allow stores under a so-called agency store model, which she’s described as a system “where the state requires agreement and compliance from private businesses granted limited licenses by the Liquor Commission beyond the traditional health and safety regulatory role of government.”
It’s an effort to let the state impose significant restrictions on businesses without having a state-run industry, which Layon has said could open New Hampshire to significant legal liability.
Among the changes approved at Monday’s hearing was a severability clause between what Layon has called broad “operational” control over agency stores from what she calls more limited “regulatory” control. Her amendment divides those two roles—regulation and broader operational control—and says that they’re severable. That means that if the federal government decides to go after the state for its day-to-day oversight of the industry, as Layon and others have warned could happen, the state could still preserve its regulatory authority over cannabis businesses. The change would also allow lawmakers in future years to shift away from the agency store model toward a more traditional private marketplace.
“At least if we have these clear lines between the operational control and the regulatory control, there’s an opportunity for the state to pivot if we’ve adopted the wrong model,” she explained of the change last week.
Another change reduced the proposed penalty for public consumption of marijuana. Initially a second or subsequent offense could be charged as an undefined misdemeanor, meaning prosecutors could charge the case as a Class A misdemeanor and seek jail time for a defendant. The bill’s adjusted language specifies that repeat offenses would be charged instead as Class B misdemeanors, which carries up to a $1,200 fine but no possibility of jail time.
H/T: marijuanamoment.net
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