Exactly 16 Senators: New Hampshire Overrides Ayotte's Veto on Medical Cannabis Greenhouses

Two weeks before New Hampshire's Veto Day, Matt Simon did the arithmetic in public. "We will need at least 16 senators to support the bill August 19 in order to override the veto," he wrote on August 5 on the website of GraniteLeaf Cannabis, the Peterborough grower and Chichester and Merrimack dispensary operator where he is director of public and government relations. Eighteen of the state's 24 senators had voted in March to keep Senate Bill 468 alive. Simon asked patients to call their senators anyway, "politely." (S1, S2)

On Wednesday, August 19, the Senate voted 16-8. Not 17. Sixteen, the exact two-thirds the state constitution requires to enact a bill over a governor's objection. All eight Democrats and eight of the chamber's 16 Republicans voted yes. The Senate president, Sharon Carson, and the majority leader, Regina Birdsell, voted no. The House followed, 257-44. "Well, it couldn't have been any closer," Simon wrote the next morning. (S3, S4, S5)

The bill that squeaked through does one thing. It lets each of New Hampshire's three nonprofit medical cannabis producers ask the Department of Health and Human Services for permission to grow in a greenhouse, "in order to reduce energy costs and provide lower prices for registered qualifying patients." Since the state's Therapeutic Cannabis Program began dispensing in 2016, every gram sold in New Hampshire has been grown indoors under high-intensity lights. Gov. Kelly Ayotte vetoed the bill on June 12 with a statement two sentences long: "I do not support expanding the cultivation of marijuana in our state. For this reason, I have vetoed SB 468." (S6, S7, S8)

New Hampshire is the only New England state without legal adult-use sales, and its medical program is one of the smallest in the country: roughly 17,000 registered patients and caregivers, three growers, seven dispensaries, and a two-ounce possession limit. The fight over SB 468 was not about whether the state would have a cannabis industry. It was about whether the tiny one it already has would be allowed to turn off some of the lights. On Veto Day, a Legislature controlled by the governor's own party decided it would, making SB 468 the only Senate bill of the session overridden in both chambers, two years after Chris Sununu killed an almost identical bill and the Senate let his veto stand. (S9, S10, S11, S12)

The economics are not complicated, and the bill's sponsors have been making the same argument for years. "Therapeutic cannabis is not covered by health insurance, and many patients struggle to afford it out of pocket," Sen. Howard Pearl, the Loudon Republican who sponsored the bill, and Sen. Tara Reardon, a Concord Democrat who cosponsored it, wrote in a joint Concord Monitor op-ed on June 18, six days after the veto. "When prices are too high, patients are often forced to seek relief elsewhere, either from unregulated sources or from dispensaries in neighboring states." Every neighboring state, they noted, allows greenhouse cultivation. (S13)

When New Hampshire's dispensaries opened, an eighth of an ounce of flower sold for more than $50, well above prices in Massachusetts and Maine. It now sells for about $30, Simon told NH Business Review in July, and he estimated that greenhouse cultivation could cut production costs by as much as 50%. GraniteLeaf, which operated as Prime ATC until a rebrand, cut flower prices in 2021 after doubling its grow space; its silver-tier eighth went to $45 then. The company's own newsletters are blunt about why the ceiling has not come down further: indoor-only cultivation "requires high-intensity lighting and a tremendous amount of electricity." (S14, S15, S16)

The bill nearly died in March. The Senate Judiciary Committee voted 3-1 to recommend sending it to interim study, the legislative equivalent of a drawer. On March 26, the full Senate rejected that recommendation 18-6, Pearl moved "ought to pass," and the bill cleared on a voice vote. The House passed it the same way. Then it sat on Ayotte's desk until June 12, when she vetoed it alongside a labor-inspection bill and a guardian ad litem bill, and offered no reasoning beyond her opposition to more cannabis being grown. (S1, S17, S7, S8)

That brevity was itself a departure. When Sununu vetoed House Bill 1581 in July 2024, a bill that would have allowed the same greenhouses, he wrote that it "provides scant detail regarding safety, security, and location requirements" and that "those details are necessary to ensure appropriate controls on a regulated substance." The House had the votes to override him that year; the Senate did not. The 2026 bill answered Sununu's objection directly: it requires DHHS to write rules on location and security, requires each grower to submit a "detailed proposal" including a plan to cut energy costs and prices, requires the department to solicit input from the host town, and requires every greenhouse operator to report annually on what happened to its energy bills and its prices. Ayotte vetoed it anyway. (S12, S6, S9)

On the Senate floor before the vote, Reardon made the affordability case one more time. "Patients are benefiting from the program, including many who were previously dependent on opioids for pain management. The one problem associated with a therapeutic cannabis program is affordability," she said. "We've heard that therapeutic cannabis isn't covered by insurance, so patients are paying out of pocket for this. And we've been hearing the same complaint that it's too expensive for many, many years." The obvious factor, she said, was that New Hampshire's growers "are allowed only to cultivate indoors with high intensity lighting, and this is by far the most expensive way to produce cannabis." (S3)

“I understand that the governor doesn't support legalization, but vetoing a few secure greenhouses? It's hard to understand how this is even controversial.”

— Matt Simon, Director of Public and Government Relations, GraniteLeaf Cannabis

Sen. William Gannon, a Republican who voted to sustain the veto, argued the bill was "vague with no guardrails" and that "there's no evidence to support the greenhouse growing of marijuana." His sharper objection was about where the savings would go. "There's no really guarantee here that the money made is not to be turned to profit," he said. "We don't know that they're going to use it to lower the cost of the product." The growers are nonprofits under state law, but Gannon's point has some force: the bill requires a plan to lower prices and an annual report on whether prices fell, not a price cut. (S3, S6)

Rep. Wayne MacDonald, a Londonderry Republican, made the counterargument in the House. A center that wants a greenhouse, he said, must submit "plans to reduce energy costs and provide lower prices for registered qualifying patients" and win regulators' approval first. "If the proposal is approved, it will enable the center to better serve those who benefit from cannabis for therapeutic use." The only person to testify against the bill in committee this year was a former legislator who now chairs Smart Approaches to Marijuana NH. (S3, S18)

The override landed in a political season. Veto Day came three weeks before the September 8 primaries, and Ayotte, who is seeking reelection, had vetoed 31 bills this session, a modern record for a governor whose party controls the State House. Lawmakers sustained most of them and overrode seven. Democratic gubernatorial candidate Cinde Warmington had already turned the greenhouse veto into a campaign clip: "Come on, Kelly. Shouldn't we be trying to make health care more affordable for Granite Staters, not less?" Ayotte has said separately that she will veto any adult-use legalization bill that reaches her desk, and that federal rescheduling did not change her mind. (S10, S11, S3, S18)

The program she is declining to expand is growing on its own. DHHS data released in May showed more than 2,100 new patients joined last year, pushing the registry to 16,846 patients and caregivers as of June 2025, about 1.2% of the state's population, with Simon estimating another thousand since. The growth followed 2024 changes that let doctors certify any debilitating condition and added generalized anxiety disorder. Patients skew older; nearly 70% are over 45, and pain is the most common reason they enroll. Some in the North Country drive upwards of an hour to reach one of the seven dispensaries in Chichester, Conway, Dover, Keene, Lebanon, Merrimack and Plymouth. Dr. Jerry Knirk, the retired surgeon who chairs the Therapeutic Cannabis Medical Oversight Board, told the Monitor the state's strict regulatory environment is part of why prices stay high. (S19, S20)

1. DHHS must adopt greenhouse rules under RSA 541-A covering location and security; the law sets no deadline.
2. Each of the three alternative treatment centers (GraniteLeaf, Sanctuary ATC, Temescal Wellness) may then submit a detailed proposal, including a plan to reduce energy costs and patient prices, and the host town must be consulted.
3. Every greenhouse operator must report annually to DHHS on the impact on energy costs and product prices; DHHS folds that into its own annual report.
4. September 8, 2026: New Hampshire primaries. Ayotte faces reelection in November against a Democratic field that has campaigned on the veto.

Simon's company celebrated 10 years of serving patients this month. Its first decade was spent entirely under lights in Peterborough. "Some of our elected officials still oppose allowing sunlight to touch any of our plants," he wrote in the August 5 post. Two weeks later, by the narrowest margin the constitution allows, that is no longer the law. "We are doing the best we can to provide quality products at affordable prices," he told Marijuana Moment after the vote, "and we know that being able to use sunlight will help." (S1, S2, S3)

Whether it helps, and by how much, is now a question the law itself requires someone to answer in writing, once a year, to the department Ayotte oversees. (S6)

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