NH Senate passes stricter sentencing for fentanyl dealers; now debate shifts to the House

Yahoo

05-02-2025

Senate Bill 14 seeks to create mandatory minimum sentences for people convicted on fentanyl charges. (Photo by)
A pair of Republican-backed bills seek to create mandatory minimum sentences for black-market fentanyl dealers in New Hampshire.
Senate Bill 14 and Senate Bill 15, both sponsored by Sandown Republican Sen. Bill Gannon, were passed by the New Hampshire Senate Thursday.
SB 14 seeks to create mandatory minimum sentences for people convicted on fentanyl charges – including manufacturing, selling, transporting, or possessing with the intent to sell. People convicted with 20 grams or more of fentanyl-class drugs would face at least 3½ years in prison and people convicted with 50 grams or more would face at least seven years under the bill. Currently, there is no minimum sentence under state law, only a maximum: 30 years on the first offense and life imprisonment for repeat offenders. These minimums and maximums represent the length of imprisonment a judge has the discretion to sentence a guilty defendant to.
'Mandatory minimums may not work for crimes of passion where an individual is acting without thoughts of consequences,' Gannon said, discussing the bill on the Senate floor Thursday. 'Dealers, though, of large quantities of fentanyl are businessmen and businesswomen. It's about the money to them, and they do think about the consequences.'
Gannon invoked testimony he heard last year from a former convicted drug dealer who said dealers prefer to operate in New Hampshire over Maine because of Maine's mandatory minimum sentences.
The bill was amended to increase the quantities of fentanyl found from five to 20 grams for the 3½-year sentence and from 28 to 50 grams for the seven-year sentence.
Gannon said this amendment was done at the behest of police departments and testimony from residents 'so we wouldn't catch in the net too many small fish.'
The bill contains exceptions for offenders under 18 years old and those with impaired mental capacity – though the influence of drugs taken voluntarily does not count as impairment. The exceptions also extend to an accomplice whose participation in the crime was relatively minor.
A similar bill, SB 15, would create even harsher minimum sentences in death-resulting cases. The bill seeks to make people who illegally manufactured, sold, or dispensed fentanyl that results in someone dying strictly liable for that death and face a minimum sentence of 10 years in prison.
Gannon argued mandatory minimums would result 'in equitable sentencing' because there would be less discrepancy of sentence lengths among judges in different areas, between poor and wealthy offenders, or among offenders of different races.
Sen. Rebecca Perkins Kwoka, a Portsmouth Democrat, disputed the efficacy of mandatory minimum sentences. While she said there was 'no daylight' between her and the sponsors of the bill on wanting to protect New Hampshire communities from fentanyl, she argued mandatory minimums are not the way to do so.
'The fact is mandatory minimums are not effective,' she said. 'It is simply a show policy that will have massive consequences. This bill takes the power out of the hands of judges and is incredibly expensive. Mandating higher sentences is mandating a higher bill for New Hampshire, and it will not be well spent.'
She noted that the bills' sponsors have not put forth any studies showing mandatory minimums effectively deter crime.
On the contrary, a report from the National Research Council concluded in 2014 that mandatory minimums 'have few, if any, deterrent effects.' Additionally, in 2018, a broader 50-state study from the Pew Charitable Trusts found no significant relationship between sentencing and illegal drug use, drug arrests, and rates of overdose.
Perkins Kwoka argued before the votes that legislators had two choices: 'legislate for cold, hard data or legislate for headlines.'
Sen. Daryl Abbas, a Salem Republican who co-sponsored both bills, emphasized the legislation was aimed at dealers not users. He noted that 20 grams of fentanyl is 10,000 lethal doses. (Medical consensus agrees with this statement as a lethal dose, while varying based on body weight and other factors, is generally considered to be about 2 milligrams, according to the Oklahoma State University Center for Health Sciences and the Drug Enforcement Agency.)
'That's not for personal use,' he said. 'If you have that much fentanyl on you, you can kill up to 10,000 people.'
In opposing the bill, Sen. Cindy Rosenwald, a Nashua Democrat, told the story of her 'close relative' who is addicted to fentanyl and homeless.
'Her addiction has overpowered everything else in her life,' she said. 'If one dealer is off the street, she will find another. That is how powerful her addiction is. What she needs is treatment, housing, the ability to be connected to services. Sending funds to incarcerate more people will come at the expense – I know it will – of treatment and in some cases will serve to increase property taxes.'
SB 14 and SB 15 were passed on a vote of 15-8 and 14-9, respectively, along party lines (except for one Republican, Sen. Tim McGough, voting against SB 15). Now that the Senate has approved the bills, they will be debated by the House.
This is not the first time Gannon and allies have attempted to create mandatory minimums for fentanyl-related charges. 2024's Senate Bill 414 and Senate Bill 415, both sponsored by Gannon, would've created the same mandatory minimums as this year's bills before the amendment. Those bills had the support of then-Gov. Chris Sununu and the New Hampshire State Police, the Bulletin reported at the time. Both 2024 bills were also passed by the Senate but died in the House.
In 2024, representatives in the House objected to the bills because they believed mandatory minimums to be ineffective and the bills too broad. They voted overwhelmingly, 340-24, to table SB 415, and sent SB 414 to interim study, killing the bill for the session.
This session, the mandatory minimums have support from newly elected Republican Gov. Kelly Ayotte, who called for them on the campaign trail last year and thanked senators for passing the bill in a post to social media Thursday.
Mandatory minimums like those set by SB 14 and SB 15 are controversial nationally, particularly on the left. Several leading advocacy groups on prison reform oppose mandatory minimum laws. That includes the Brennan Center for Justice, The Sentencing Project, and Families Against Mandatory Minimums.
The Sentencing Project, in a 2024 report, cites multiple research studies, including from the National Research Council, the Wake Forest Law Review, and the Center for Court Innovation, to argue mandatory minimums have no overall benefit to crime control, contribute to prison overcrowding, and are more often imposed on crimes committed by people of color.
The Brennan Center, in a 2021 report, argues that mandatory minimums 'shackle judges' by preventing them from 'calibrating punishment to suit the person or the crime.'
'For mandatory minimums or other punitive sentencing laws to prevent crime, people would need to know about them prior to committing a crime,' Families Against Mandatory Minimums wrote. 'In reality, few people are aware of penalties for particular crimes. Therefore, increasing the severity of punishment does not deter people from engaging in criminal activity.'
Mandatory minimums arose in the U.S. as part of a push to address crime in the latter half of the 20th century, an effort many have criticized for being overly punitive and creating overcrowded prisons. Between 1975 and 1995, all 50 states passed mandatory minimum laws, according to the National Research Council. Those laws, among others meant to strengthen criminal punishments, corresponded with a surge in incarceration in the U.S.
From 1980 to 2010, the total U.S. prison population – including both federal and state prisoners – jumped from roughly 500,000 to 2.27 million, according to the World Prison Brief. Today, that number stands at roughly 1.8 million.
At the same time, fentanyl and other opioids have ravaged communities across the U.S. In 2022, the most recent data available, there were nearly 74,000 drug overdose deaths involving synthetic opioids (other than methadone), according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That rate was nearly 24 times larger than the rate in 2013. In New Hampshire, there were 486 total drug overdose deaths, the CDC reported, with fentanyl being a leading driver.