A New Hampshire Democratic candidate for governor says the state should legalize marijuana and stop adding revenue to the coffers of its neighbors that have enacted the reform.
“We do need an additional revenue source, and there’s one sitting right out there: the legalization of cannabis,” Cinde Warmington, the sole Democrat running for her party’s nomination to challenge incumbent Gov. Kelly Ayotte (R), said at a town hall event on Wednesday.
“There is no reason why the citizens of New Hampshire should be driving across state borders to pay taxes to Massachusetts, Vermont and Maine to purchase a product that they obviously have stated that they want to have access to in our state,” she said. “We need to get that done.”
Ayotte, who is up for reelection as governor this year, opposes marijuana legalization and recently vetoed legislation to allow businesses in the state’s existing medical cannabis program to cultivate in greenhouses.
Her veto was overridden by lawmakers last month, however, and now the medical marijuana cultivation measure has become law despite her objections.
In June, Warmington criticized Ayotte’s veto of the medical marijuana proposal.
“Come on, Kelly. Shouldn’t we be trying to make health care more affordable for Granite Staters, not less?” said in a video posted to social media.
“This bill would have made medical cannabis more affordable and more accessible to Granite Staters who really need it, and she vetoed it,” Warmington said. “But honestly, this is what we’ve come to expect from Kelly Ayotte. Look what she did to the Medicaid premiums. She increased them by up to $270 a month on the most vulnerable Granite Staters. She increased prescription co-pays when other costs are already going through the roof.”
“New Hampshire deserves a governor who will fight to make sure we have lower health care costs and that health care is more accessible,” the Democratic candidate, who previously served as a member of the New Hampshire Executive Council, said. “That’s the bottom line.”
In a veto statement on the medical marijuana greenhouse bill, the governor simply said, “I do not support expanding the cultivation of marijuana in our state.”
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Ayotte has separately threatened to veto any marijuana legalization bill that reaches her desk.
The governor said last year that her position on the reform would not change even as the federal government moved forward with rescheduling the plant.
In 2024, then-Gov. Chris Sununu (R) vetoed a similar proposal to allow cannabis businesses to cultivate in greenhouses. The House had enough votes to override that action, but the Senate did not.
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