Democratic gubernatorial candidate Joyce Craig suited up on Wednesday – coveralls, hairnet and all – to tour GraniteLeaf Cannabis in Peterborough. 

Walking through the medical marijuana production facility, GraniteLeaf CEO Keenan Blum showed Craig the growing process, and they discussed the legislative issues the company and the drug face.

“Over 70% of residents in our state are supportive of legalization of cannabis, and I want to support this industry,” Craig said. “It will benefit our small businesses, our farmers and provide significant revenues that we need in the State of New Hampshire.”

As New Hampshire legislators have considered legalizing recreational cannabis in recent years, Craig campaigns on a pledge to carry it over the finish line. She favors a small-business retail market, which she argues would create new revenue streams that the state can use to supplement public education and housing efforts. Her opponent, Republican Kelly Ayotte, disagrees. While she supports the limited Therapeutic Cannabis Program, which allows only patients certified by doctors to use medical marijuana, Ayotte said she won’t legalize cannabis on a larger scale.

“We’re certainly not going to smoke our way to a balanced budget,” Ayotte said at a debate last week.

Blum took Craig through the various growing rooms, the lab, the extraction process and the packaging department. Though he wasn’t GraniteLeaf’s founding CEO, he also described what it was like to get the business off the ground. It was a long process and a heavy lift, he said, due to New Hampshire’s strict regulations around medical marijuana and how it’s produced, tracked and sold.

“It just is really, really a complicated process – nothing simple,” Blum said.

When Craig asked how the next governor could help, Blum emphasized a difference between regulations that seem impressive and those that actually produce results.

Several pieces of potential legislation are already in the works to legalize and create a retail market for cannabis in the state. Matt Simon, GraniteLeaf’s director of public and legislative affairs, said he’s in talks with lawmakers to coordinate their effort in the next legislative session.

Blum said he likes Craig’s small-business legalization model. It’s difficult to scale, he said, with no ability to outsource work outside of New Hampshire and a limited customer base. The state’s Therapeutic Cannabis Program, which is the only legal way for New Hampshire residents to consume cannabis, has about 15,000 patients split among GraniteLeaf and two other state-approved companies.

The election results for the state House of Representatives and Senate could determine the future of marijuana in the Granite State, but either way, Craig said she plans to aggressively pursue it. With a favorable Legislature, she said, there are specifics to work out around safety and local control, but she anticipates it could pass quickly.

“I'm not going to sit in my office and let the Legislature do this,” Craig said. “I'm going to work with them to make sure that we're working together so when it comes to my office, we can get it done.”

Charlotte Matherly is the State House reporter for the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript and Concord Monitor in partnership with Report for America. Follow her on X at @charmatherly, or send her an email at cmatherly@cmonitor.com.