HAMPTON — Renny Cushing says “I think New Hampshire’s ready” for legalizing marijuana for recreational use.

The six-term state Democratic state representative from Hampton and longtime leading Statehouse proponent of marijuana legalization spoke on the eve of a Tuesday House vote on a bill that would allow for the use and home cultivation of small amounts of marijuana by adults for recreational purposes.

The House was originally supposed to vote on the measure last Wednesday, but Cushing couldn’t get back to New Hampshire in time from a family vacation in Australia. He asked Speaker Gene Chandler to delay the vote out of courtesy “because I wanted to be part of the conversation.”

A House Criminal Justice and Public Safety subcommittee passed the bill (HB 656), but it was rejected in November by the full committee. But committee votes are only a recommendation, so Cushing is hoping that the full House will overturn the committee’s labeling of the bill as "inexpedient to legislate.”

The New Hampshire House vote comes just five days after the Vermont House approved a similar bill, which would legalize possession of up to 1 ounce of marijuana and allow people to grow up to six marijuana plants at home. A similar measure passed the Vermont Senate last year and Gov. Phil Scott has indicated he’ll sign the legislation into law.

Massachusetts and Maine voted in 2016 to legalize recreational marijuana.

“I think the recent actions by the Vermont House create a situation where effective July 1 of this year New Hampshire’s going to be surrounded by states where the adult use of marijuana for recreational purposes is going to be legal,” Cushing said. “I think that we’d do well to get in step with where the national trend is going.”

Canada, New Hampshire’s neighbor to the north, is expected to legalize marijuana consumption later this year.

Tuesday’s vote also comes five days after U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions scrapped a nearly five-year policy from former President Barack Obama's administration that relaxed enforcement of federal marijuana laws in states that legalized the drug.

Cushing said Sessions' move is “creating a bit of a showdown.”

“A majority of the states, including New Hampshire, already provide for the therapeutic use of cannabis for medicinal purposes. And the idea that he’s all of a sudden unleashing U.S. attorneys knocking on doors of dispensaries where they dispense or sell medical marijuana really goes contrary to the whole rhetoric about states’ rights and home rules. It’s a real overreaching by the federal government,” Cushing explained.

And he predicted the Trump administration’s move won’t “have much of a negative impact” on Tuesday’s vote.

“If anything, it may have the opposite effect,” he predicted. "I think people kind of recoil at the idea that were going to have the heavy hand of the federal government knocking the doors of patients who are using therapeutic cannabis and putting them under arrest.”

Four years ago, the New Hampshire House narrowly approved a bill that would legalize, tax, and regulate marijuana for adults. But after a veto threat by then-Gov. Maggie Hassan, who’s now the state’s junior U.S. senator, the bill failed during a second House vote.

Last year, the House and Senate passed a bill that decriminalized small amounts of marijuana, making it a violation-level offense. It was signed into law by Gov. Chris Sununu, Hassan’s successor in the corner office.

Cushing said nowadays “it’s a different political climate.” He pointed to a recent University of New Hampshire Survey Center poll, which indicted more than two-thirds of Granite Staters favored marijuana legalization.

Opponents of the bill warn that that full legalization may add to the state’s acute opioid epidemic by encouraging drug use. They also argue that it would encourage more addictive behavior in children.

But Cushing pointed to the drug crisis as a key reason to pass the bill.

“We need to keep focusing resources on the opioid crisis rather than trying to spend any time chasing after people because they want to use marijuana or cannabis in the privacy of their own home,” he said.

Cushing pointed to his service on the House Criminal Justice Committee and said, “I see we’re spending $35,000 a year to keep somebody in prison for possession of marijuana at a time where we don’t have enough beds to treat people with opioid addictions. So to me it’s just misplaced priorities.”

He said he looks “forward to the day where issues related to marijuana are dealt with on the Health and Human Services Committee or the Commerce Committee instead of the Criminal Justice Committee.”