[420 Girl]

A long-shot bid to decriminalize the possession of small amounts of marijuana went up in smoke before the state Senate on Wednesday.

The day after groups of people openly smoked pot on the Statehouse lawn to rally for decriminalization, the Senate voted to kill a bill the House had endorsed to remove the possibility of jail time for those who possess a quarter-ounce of marijuana or less.

The move came on a voice vote without debate.

“This is just the wrong kind of message we should be sending to our young people,” Sen. Lou D’Allesandro, D-Manchester, said after the vote.

Matt Simon, executive director of the N.H. Coalition for Common Sense, said Gov. John Lynch’s vow last month to veto the bill once it passed the House doomed the cause this year.

“I would say it was Gov. Lynch’s goal to shut down debate in the Senate before it could get started, and he succeeded in doing just that,” Simon said.

Marijuana legalization supporters hosted defiant rallies outside the Statehouse and in Keene on Tuesday, though they were largely ignored by law enforcement. Similar protests in Nashua have been met with arrests and resulting YouTube videos from demonstrators.

Simon said his group is still promoting a pending bill to create a study of how state and federal drug laws affect New Hampshire.

The study could help improve education of lawmakers about the advantages of decriminalizing drug laws by, for example, reducing the cost of trials.

The House Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee has heard hours of testimony for the bills and responded by overwhelmingly recommending this bill. “We believe that exposing the entire Legislature to this kind of information during a legitimate study could only make our case stronger in the future,” Simon said.

On March 11, the House passed this bill, 214-137, prompting Lynch to issue his veto threat.

“Marijuana is a controlled drug that remains illegal under federal law. I share the law enforcement community’s concerns about proliferation of this drug,” Lynch said in that statement.

Two years ago, the state Senate killed a similar bill once Lynch said he would veto that one.

As amended, the 2010 version of this bill would have carried a $200 fine for possession of up to one-quarter of an ounce of pot. Currently, possession at any amount is a misdemeanor that can carry up to a year in jail although most judges fine first-time offenders several hundred dollars.

The bill requires parents to be notified if anyone younger than 18 is cited for possession and for a judge to compel the offender to compete a drug awareness program.

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