The biggest surprise to come out of Concord last Tuesday was not the House vote to legalize marijuana. The state has been heading in that direction for years and, if the bill makes it into law, New Hampshire would join what has become a mainstream movement in the region and the country — the petulant opposition of Donald Trump’s attorney general notwithstanding.

No, the big surprise was the floor amendment to the bill eliminating provisions that would have created a regulatory system for selling — and taxing — the drug.

That’s right: The Granite State, which has a real jones for revenue because of its teetotaler stance on broad-based taxes — and as a result never misses an opportunity to profit from the sale of what many consider vices, such as alcohol, tobacco and gambling — passed up, at least for the moment, something like $42 million to $52.5 million in potential tax revenue from legal weed, according to a fiscal note attached to an earlier version of the bill.

One would be forgiven for wondering, were those lawmakers stoned? Or did they strip out the tax-and-regulate provision as a way of insulating the legalization effort from possible federal action? The federal government likely wouldn’t target individual marijuana users because its resources are finite, but it might seek to prosecute companies and their employees that are engaged in selling marijuana under a state-licensed system. And because banks can’t legally handle money from the sale of illegal drugs, perhaps that was a consideration as well.

It’s worth noting that the Vermont Senate on Wednesday gave final approval to a bill that would allow the recreational use of marijuana, and that legislation also does not establish a system to tax and regulate the production and sale of the drug. Republican Gov. Phil Scott, who has indicated he will sign the bill, set up a commission last summer to study the taxation and regulation issue. That panel is scheduled to produce a report by the end of the year with suggestions on how such a system could be set up.

Despite New Hampshire’s libertarian character, which predisposes it toward legalization, the future of its marijuana legalization effort is less clear. The state does have a track record of enlightened efforts on this front: In 2014 the House became the first legislative body in the U.S. to approve a marijuana legalization bill, and it has approved multiple decriminalization bills over the years, only to see them snuffed out in the Senate. Last year, with the backing of newly elected Republican Gov. Chris Sununu, a decriminalization bill passed both chambers and was signed into law.

But Tuesday’s bill, which supporters had hoped would move directly to the Senate, was instead referred to the House Ways and Means Committee, which has scheduled a hearing for Feb. 1. If that panel takes any action on the bill, it would require another vote in the House before moving on to the Senate. And even if approved there, Sununu stands ready to kill it.

“My administration has supported common-sense reforms to decriminalize marijuana use and expand availability of medical marijuana,” he said in a statement after Tuesday’s vote. “The reality remains that New Hampshire is in the midst of a drug crisis, and now is not the time for recreational legalization.”

The reality is that New Hampshire is in the grip of an opioid epidemic. The reality is that marijuana is not an opioid, and is no more a “gateway” to opioid addiction than alcohol or nicotine. If the state is going to reject or delay implementation of regulating and taxing retail marijuana, it should do so for valid reasons.

But let us not fail to make note of the fact that New Hampshire legislators departed from longstanding practice by resisting the temptation to go for an easy source of revenue. Let us hope that they continue to do so — that any future decisions about marijuana legalization will be driven by what’s determined to be in the best interests of New Hampshire residents, not by budgetary demands or dubious links between marijuana and addictive opioids.

Here’s one more reality: According to recent polling by the University of New Hampshire Survey Center, 52 percent of New Hampshire residents have a favorable opinion of Sununu, while 68 percent support the legalization of marijuana.

That’s a pretty high number.