NH Senate “Tables” Cannabis Decriminalization Bill During First-Ever Full Hearing

What happened to the cannabis decriminalization bill that overwhelmingly passed the house with more than 80% of NH state reps voting for it? In an embarrassing display of ignorance, watch as multiple NH senators spout off various prohibitionist lies and nonsense in this hearing that came at the end of a 12-hour day for liberty activists at the state house. Despite initially having enough votes to pass the measure, prohibitionist senator Carson moves to strip some more from the already-crippled bill. This ultimately kills it, for political reasons.(Technically it’s “tabled” until 2016.)

The good news is this is the first time the NH senate has ever had a floor discussion on the issue (the house has passed decrim six times in eight years), as ignorant as much of it was, it’s a step in the right direction. The next step is to target the bad senators for either education or elimination in 2016’s election. More detail on what happened below the video, from someone who was with me witnessing the debacle.

HB618 (Marijuana Decrim) is dead until January, at the earliest. Last night, the Senate voted 15-9 to overturn the committee’s recommendation of ITL (inexpedient to legislate/kill this bill) so that Senator Pierce could introduce a compromise amendment. This was encouraging.

 

At the point the vote was taken, Senator Sharon Carson (R-Londonderry) walked out of the session and began loudly yelling and ranting about how she couldn’t believe this was happening, marijuana is against Federal law, “they” only want it legal so they can control people better, and so on for about 10 minutes straight. When she came back, her face was red and she looked upset.
Carson made a motion to divide a certain part of the amendment, meaning that the amendment would be voted on in two parts. She called for conservative senators to remove a provision stating that a marijuana conviction could not be used to deny someone public benefits. She said that this was against local control and would mean that welfare recipients could smoke pot, etc. A few Republicans who had said they supported the amendment voted to remove that provision from the compromise amendment.

 

Without warning, a motion to table was made, which was voted on immediately and the Senate tabled the bill. That was it.

 

After the bill was tabled, Senator Carson came out to tell us, “I really support what you’re trying to do. It just wasn’t the right language. We’ll work on it again next year.” As I’ve indicated elsewhere, if it wasn’t for Carson, there’s a very good chance the compromise amendment would’ve passed and ended up on Hassan’s desk. I would’ve smiled and nodded if she had just come out to thank us for participating in the process or whatever, but to say she “supported what we were trying to do” and act like she regretted not being able to support the bill was nothing short of a lie.

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