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The New Mexico Cannabis Control Division (CCD) confirmed that its earlier claim of having one million mature plants ready for manufacturing before April was incorrect. Officials now say that the state had about a million plants at various stages between seed and sale at the time.
Before the doors opened on the state’s adult-use market, CCD officials had estimated that about one million plants were ready for sale. But according to the Santa Fe New Mexican, critics found the number unbelievable since there were only 100 licensed producers in the state operating under plant limits that would restrict growing.
Last week a reporter’s request of CCD Director Kristen Thomson for the estimated number of mature plants in the state was mistakenly answered by a contract analyst with the full number of plants.
Thomson said it’s impossible to know the number of mature plants at any given time, since the state’s BioTrack software doesn’t track growth cycles of individual plants.
The number of mature plants in the state has become a less pressing issue now that the adult-use cannabis market has been in operation for over a month. CCD spokesperson Heather Brown has confirmed that there have been no shortage problems reported in that time.
Sacred Garden Cease and Desist Lifted
A cease and desist order against one of Sacred Garden’s Santa Fe facilities has been lifted by the CCD.
In March, the CCD ordered the producer to stop selling cannabis from one of its facilities after allegedly receiving two patient complaints that Sacred Garden had sold moldy cannabis flower. Agents were sent to the facility to conduct an inspection and reported health violations that were said to pose a risk to the public.
After the company filed a request for an injunction, a Santa Fe judge ordered state regulators to allow the company to sell manufactured products that were free of molds. The judge ultimately decided that the CCD hadn’t clarified a path for the producer to remedy the violations and ordered the CCD to come up with a testing protocol that would clearly determine whether the producer was in compliance.
Following product tests for aspergillus, the cease and desist order against Sacred Garden was officially lifted.
Nevada ACLU: Pot Arrests Continue Despite Legalization
The Nevada ACLU is claiming that local law enforcement are using a legal loophole to arrest people who have legally purchased cannabis from a state dispensary.
According to a recent Marijuana Moment op-ed written by ACLU staff Attorney Sadmira Ramic, Nevada police are taking advantage of a state law that codifies cannabis as a Schedule I drug to arrest anyone who buys cannabis and then shares it with a person who has reimbursed them for the purchase.
“When Nevada voters legalized cannabis for recreational use, they required that cannabis be treated in the same manner as alcohol, but it is clear cannabis is still treated very differently from alcohol,” writes Ramic.