New Hampshire’s Republican governor and the Democratic candidate running to unseat her in next month’s elections highlighted their opposing views on marijuana legalization at a debate on Thursday.
“I oppose the legalization of cannabis in this state,” Gov. Kelly Ayotte (R) said. “When I think about children, they’re the top of my mind. The research is unbelievable—if you research it about the impact on mental health of young brains. And when you legalize something, you send a very different message to young people about the use of it. And as I think about our mental health crisis, this will only exacerbate it.”
The GOP governor went on to claim that other states that have legalized marijuana see “more traffic deaths.”
“The illegal market does not go away because the state taxes it,” Ayotte argued. “The illegal market continues to thrive. I do not think this is good for our quality of life in the state of New Hampshire and for our children.”
When a debate moderator pressed the governor about whether maintaining prohibition is a missed revenue opportunity for New Hampshire when its neighboring states have all already legalized cannabis, she replied that “this revenue comes at a huge cost.”
“It comes at the cost of the mental health of our young people. It comes at the cost of our quality of life,” Ayotte said. “I don’t think following because our neighbors do something, we should do it. We have the same discussion with our kids, right? If if Johnny jumps off the bridge, are you going to jump off the bridge with it?”
The Republican governor claimed that “other states who have done this are starting to rethink their decision on it because you’ve seen the situation with traffic deaths.”
While neighboring Massachusetts does have a prohibitionist-funded initiative on the November ballot that would roll back cannabis legalization by making recreational sales illegal again, polling has consistently shown that a strong majority of voters plan to vote against it.
Democratic challenger Cinde Warmington, on the other hand, said during the debate that “I support the the sale and legalization of cannabis as an additional revenue source in our state.”
“I think it is really odd that we are sending our citizenry over state lines and paying millions and millions—tens of millions—of dollars to our neighboring state in taxes when that revenue should be here in our state,” she said.
When the moderator raised concerns about safety and children, the Democratic gubernatorial candidate replied that “by legalizing cannabis, then you make sure that what’s being sold—they’re not buying what’s on the street, which can be laced with all sorts of toxins, and which also they’re selling synthetic marijuana on the street.”
“It is a safety issue to make sure that we are legalizing cannabis,” Warmington, who previously served as a member of the New Hampshire Executive Council, said.
Warmington has previously discussed her support for legalizing marijuana, including at a town hall event last month when she said that “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.”
Ayotte, for her part, recently vetoed legislation to allow businesses in the state’s existing medical cannabis program to cultivate in greenhouses.
Her veto was overridden by lawmakers, 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.
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