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Sponsor and police urge stiffer fentanyl penalties in SB 467 hearing; defense groups and recovery providers oppose
Summary
A public hearing on SB 467 featured the bill’s sponsor, Senator Bill Ganon, and law-enforcement witnesses urging weight-based mandatory minimums to target fentanyl dealers, while criminal-defense lawyers, recovery providers, the ACLU and people with lived experience said mandatory minimums risk coercing pleas and undermining treatment.
Senator Bill Ganon, prime sponsor of Senate Bill 467, opened the committee’s hearing by saying the bill raises weight thresholds and targets higher-level dealers rather than low-level users, and emphasized the bill’s combined aims of rehabilitation, deterrence and punishment. "We not after small fish. We want to have a big net," he told the committee, arguing new weight tiers (he cited 25 grams and 50 grams) would capture dealers who supply deadly fentanyl while still preserving treatment pathways for certain defendants.
The bill drew immediate support from law-enforcement witnesses. Lieutenant Derek Ataldo of the Manchester Police Department, testifying for the New Hampshire Association of Chiefs of Police, said street-level distribution is organized around low-weight transactions that aggregate into larger profits and that the bill’s aggregation language would make it harder…
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