New Hampshire Senate passed a bill last week that scrapped a compromise law which would have lower the penalty in New Hampshire for psilocybin first possession, while also introducing mandatory minimum sentences regarding fentanyl.
A bi-partisan conference committee came to an agreement about the SB 14 earlier in the month and returned it to the two chambers. While the House initially rejected the proposal Thursday, representatives returned from their lunch break, took up the bill again and passed it on a 185–182 reconsideration vote.
On the Senate side, however, Sen. Bill Gannon (R)—who briefly sat on the conference committee before being replaced by Sen. Daryl Abbas (R)—moved on the chamber floor that the measure be tabled, effectively killing it. This motion was approved by voice vote and without debate.
Rep. Kevin Verville’s (R) psilocybin provision was lauded. While he didn’t like the mandatory minimums on fentanyl charges, Verville saw this bill as a compromise that would reduce the first offense of psilocybin from a current felony down to an unknown misdemeanor.
Verville, in an email sent to MEDCAN24 following the Senate’s vote to table the bill, called it “highly regrettetable.” He said that the senators had “chosen to stand up with the fentanyl drug dealers who are destroying NH communities and families, and killing citizens while rejecting a compromise that would reduce the amount of psilocybin, the first offense, to a misdemeanor charge from the current felony.
The representative nevertheless wrote that “This experience has not demotivated me but invigorated.”
He added, “You can expect both medical bills and psilocybin penalties to come up next year.”
Earlier this summer, the Senate scuppered HB 528, a separate and more ambitious psilocybin proposal from Verville. The House passed the bill, which would have reduced criminal penalties to $100 for first-time possession.
A Senate committee added language in the bill at one time that included mandatory minimums for fentanyl overdoses and fentanyl. Tara Reardon, a Democratic senator at the time asked her colleagues whether the House’s preferred move of reducing psilocybin penalty was being traded for “increased penalties” against fentanyl.
Gannon replied that yes, one could.
If passed, HB 528 would have make second and third psilocybin offenses Class B misdemeanors, carrying fines of up to $500 and $1,000, respectively, but with no risk of jail time. Fourth and subsequent offences would still be felonies.
It would be still illegal to sell or distribute the substance. The reform only applies to people over 18 who acquire, purchase, transport, possess or use psilocybin.
Verville’s original legislation, which would have removed all penalties for obtaining, buying, transporting, possesing, or using psilocybin on a non-commercial basis, had been introduced. However a House committee amended the bill before unanimously advancing it in March.
Verville wrote in an email on Friday that, despite the fact that there was no tangible change this year, the discussion about psilocybin “is proof that the Overton Window has changed with respect to psychedelics.” In other words, lawmakers—and the public at large—are increasingly open to psychedelics reform as reasonable, practicable policy.
It is obvious that New Hampshire wants to move away from the archaic psychedelics laws of the 1960s. Instead, it will embrace modest but sensible reforms. You can be sure that my work on this issue is not over.
Despite SB 14‘s origin as a bill to stiffen criminal penalties around fentanyl and overdose deaths, advocates of drug prohibition cheered the bill’s demise this week.
On social media, the group Foundation for Drug Policy Solutions – led by Kevin Sabet a leading anti-drug activist who founded Smart Approaches to Marijuana – said that they “APPLAUD NEW HAMPSHIRE for TABLING SENATE Bill 14”.
Sabet said that both Republicans and Democrats had “stood for public health” by presenting the bill.
In a press release, he stated that New Hampshire’s prisons do not contain mushroom-related felons. “The stepdown of severity would have dealt with what amounts to an non-issue.” Kudos go to legislators who realized that normalizing the use of psilocybin with reduced penalties would send a broader message. Some of these dangerous substances may be safe or even therapeutic.“
SB 14 was passed earlier in the session by the Senate and would have set mandatory minimum sentences on certain offenses involving fentanyl. But a House committee added language to reduce the penalty for psilocybin, making it a misdemeanor rather than a felony to possess up to 3/4 of an ounce of the psychedelic—though on the first offense. The subsequent offenses will remain felonies.
Abbas stated at a conference committee on the bill that “any subsequent offenses after the first offense will still be felonies.”
The first offense of possession would fall under the category of a misdemeanor that is not classified. Prosecutors could charge it as a misdemeanor Class A, or Class B, with the former not including jail time.
The proposed penalties for fentanyl would apply to manufacturing, transportation, or possession with intent to sell. The activities which involve more than 20 grams of fentanyl would be punished by a mandatory 3 1/2-year minimum sentence in prison, whereas 50 grams and more would result in a seven-year minimum.
Before reaching an agreement on the proposal the bipartisan conference committee agreed at first to drop the idea. After Gannon, and other members were replaced, the conference committee moved on to the compromise bill.
Verville noted that the conference committee report on the bill was “signed off by three Republican senators, and five Republican House members…making this entire affair a Republican led effort.”
As a group, the Senate is generally hostile to proposals for drug reform. While a number of bills have cleared the House of Representatives—including a renewed effort to legalize adult-use marijuana—virtually all have gone on to die in the Senate.
As for cannabis-related legislation, the state Senate in early May narrowly voted to table a House-passed marijuana legalization bill, effectively ending this year’s effort to end cannabis prohibition in the “Live Free or Die” state.
The chamber voted 12–10 to table the measure, HB 198, from Rep. Jared Sullivan (D). It had previously passed the House of Representatives in March, but weeks later the Senate Judiciary Committee recommended the proposal be rejected.
If enacted, the bill would have legalized noncommercial possession and use of marijuana among adults 21 and older, permitting adults to have up to two ounces of marijuana flower, 10 grams of concentrate and up to 2,000 milligrams of THC in other cannabis products.
Sullivan’s proposal was a pared-down version of a legalization measure lawmakers nearly passed last year, under then-Gov. Chris Sununu (R), but it did not include that bill’s regulated commercial system—a controversial issue that ultimately derailed the earlier effort.
Verville introduced, on the other hand, a bill of legalization that would have lifted restrictions surrounding marijuana, but did not establish a regulatory system at state level.
New Hampshire’s residents are strongly in favor of cannabis legalization, according to a recent state poll. In late April, a Granite State Poll, from the University of New Hampshire’s States of Opinion Project, found 70 percent support for the reform, including majorities of Democrats, Republicans and independents.
It added that “Support has increased a little since June 2024 (65%), and is still higher than it was in mid-2010.” Majorities of Democrats (84%), Independents (72%), as well as Republicans (55%), support the legalization of marijuana for personal consumption.
Last legislative session, New Hampshire lawmakers nearly passed a bill that would have legalized and regulated marijuana for adults—a proposal that then-Gov. Chris Sununu had stated that he supported the bill. This measure was ultimately defeated by a dispute over the way in which it would be run. 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.
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