CONCORD, N.H. — This won’t be the year that recreational marijuana is legalized for adults in New Hampshire, after House lawmakers on Thursday defeated the long-debated effort by just five votes.
Though the bill was aligned with suggestions offered by Governor Chris Sununu and passed the Senate in a bipartisan 14-10 vote earlier on Thursday, House Bill 1633, which would have given oversight of the stores to the New Hampshire Liquor Commission, faced opposition from lawmakers who are skeptical about legalization and some proponents of legalization who had reservations about the proposed legislation.
“Literally nobody in this body likes this bill,” said Representative Jared Sullivan, a Bethlehem Democrat, who supports legalizing but said this proposal had too much government control.
“We should just pass a good bill next year, one that decriminalizes [marijuana] in 2025,” he added.
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New Hampshire is the only state in New England where recreational marijuana use is still illegal, and lawmakers have been working to legalize it since at least 2018. If HB 1633 had passed, the Granite State would have been the 25th state to allow adults to use recreational marijuana, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Previous attempts to legalize marijuana have passed the 400-person House only to die in the Senate. This year was the first time a majority of Senators were willing to approve it.
A deal brokered last week by a panel of lawmakers from the House and Senate fell apart, and the House voted to table HB 1633 in a 178-to-173 vote Thursday afternoon, effectively killing it. A subsequent vote to remove the bill from the table also failed.
“This bill does address what the people of our state want,” said Senator Shannon Chandley, an Amherst Democrat. “They want cannabis to be legalized.”
This year’s attempt to make recreational cannabis legal went through multiple rounds of negotiation after the House and Senate passed significantly different versions of the legislation.
The deal they reached sought to legalize marijuana for people 21 or older, regulating it in a way that is similar to alcohol. The state legalized medicinal marijuana in 2013.
The bill that was killed was closer to the Senate’s proposal to legalize marijuana and would have allowed up to 15 retail stores to be franchised. The stores would have been privately owned but subject to tight state regulations about the stores’ appearance and pricing of products.
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The existing New Hampshire Liquor Commission would have been in charge of overseeing the industry, with the help of a new cannabis control commission. There would have also been a 15 percent state tax on gross revenue. It would have gone into effect in 2026.
Last year, Sununu indicated his preference for legalization which gives the state more control over distribution, marketing, and sales. Those who prefer a free-market approach were skeptical about the level of state control in the current plan.
But it also attracted supporters. The American Civil Liberties Union of New Hampshire commended efforts to legalize recreational marijuana, pointing out that the prohibition leads to around 1,000 arrests for possession per year, harming Black and brown people who have been subjected to disproportionately high arrest rates.
“Pushing legalization off yet another year makes clear that lawmakers are willing to ignore the will of their own constituents and are OK with continuing to needlessly ensnare over a thousand people — disproportionately Black people — in New Hampshire’s criminal justice system every year,” said Devon Chaffee, executive director of the ACLU of New Hampshire.
“While politicians argue, the impacts of these arrests will continue to ruin lives,” she said.
While some lawmakers who support legalization had reservations about the compromise proposal, other advocates said now is the time to legalize. Timothy Egan, who chairs the New Hampshire Cannabis Association, was among them. The association is a for-profit company that does advocacy and education work in support of cannabis in New Hampshire.
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“This creates an industry for NH farmers & entrepreneurs,” he said in a social media post about the proposal last Thursday. “No legalization is no help to any one.”
In an interview, Egan said that while he personally supported this bill, the board of the New Hampshire Cannabis Association was divided on it. Some members wanted to hold out for a proposal that would allow for more stores and give less control to the liquor commission.
“It’s a shame that people who got elected don’t represent the wishes of their constituents,” Egan said after the bill was defeated.
About 7 in 10 New Hampshire residents support legalized marijuana, according to polling from the University of New Hampshire Survey Center.
Amanda Gokee can be reached at amanda.gokee@globe.com. Follow her @amanda_gokee.