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A new bill could lead to some big changes in New Mexico’s cannabis law. The omnibus cannabis bill is meant to clean up some unforeseen issues with the law that have become apparent since the state began adult-use marijuana sales.
The bill’s sponsors, state Sen. Katy Duhigg (D-Albuquerque) and state Rep. Andrea Romero (D-Santa Fe), are looking to give state regulators more power to enforce rules, while increasing penalties for bad players.
The lawmakers say it’s typical to see these kinds of changes happen when states legalize marijuana.
“Every state that has legalized recreational cannabis has needed to come back in subsequent years and fine tune their legislation,” Duhigg tells The Rolling Paper. “We’re going through the same process that all the other states that have done this have gone through.”
Duhigg calls the legislation a “cleanup bill,” and Romero says it’s par for the course.
“One of the things I’ve learned is that every state that’s legalized has made changes to their statutes from the beginning,” she says. “We’re really hopeful that this is the right way to go about it.”
Romero tells The Paper. that she and Duhigg have consulted with other states that have legalized marijuana to address illicit sales.
“We’ve spoken to folks across the board about how we could do this best,” says Romero. “We’re looking at how we can tighten up the industry to make sure that illicit products and unsafe products are not on our shelves.”
CCD Enforcement
If the bill is passed, perhaps the biggest changes will be in the area of regulation enforcement.
The bill seeks to increase penalties for trafficking illegal cannabis, while giving regulators greater ability to enforce the rules. But first, it has to explicitly define illegal cannabis.
“What we’re seeing, here in New Mexico, is a whole lot of cannabis coming in from other states,” says Duhigg, “which is automatically illegal.”
She says illegal cannabis needs to be clearly defined and the penalties need to be raised to discourage bad players from selling illicit products.
The bill would also give the state’s Cannabis Control Division (CCD) the ability to seize or embargo products suspected of originating from out-of-state or being produced in some illicit manner. CCD compliance officers can currently report the suspected product and order the noncompliant licensee to sit on it, but that’s the limit of their authority.
“What happens now, is they find [illicit plants], the owners realize they’ve been caught, CCD comes back a few days later, and it’s gone,” says Duhigg. “It’s already on the black market.”
The bill would also seal up an area that bad actors can exploit using minors. According to Duhigg, under the current law, if a minor is caught in possession of cannabis, they are given four hours of community service and four hours of drug education.
The new bill would give children’s court judges the discretion to penalize minors as they see fit, within the bounds of the state’s delinquency laws. Duhigg says the change would discourage bad players from using minors to traffic illicit weed and would be more beneficial for the minors.
“A big part of children’s court is connecting that kid with the services that they need so that they don’t end up in adult court,” says Duhigg. “And if you only have four hours of a drug education course or community service, your entire contact with the kid is at children’s court. That does not give you the contact you need to be able to connect them with those services.”
“Our primary goal is to keep children safe,” says Romero. “If that’s the first goal, everything else will trickle out of that.
The bill would also create an exemption for ongoing CCD investigations from the Inspection of Public Records Act. Right now, businesses that are being investigated by regulators can request records pertaining to their case and can see who placed the complaint against them.
“That is not conducive to creating an environment where people are going to feel safe reporting the illegal activities,” says Duhigg. “So we want to protect that information.”
Clean Up
The bill would also change the language in some areas of the law that have created unforeseen problems like the ban on holding both a liquor and cannabis license.
Currently, business owners aren’t allowed to have both licenses. According to Duhigg and Romero, the intention behind the law was to keep businesses from selling both pot and alcohol on the same property—not to generally limit the licenses that a business-owner can hold.
“What we know is that when you’re serving folks both at the same time, the fatality of accidents skyrocket,” says Duhigg.
If passed, the omnibus bill would make it so that an individual or company can hold both licenses and operate businesses that sell liquor and cannabis as long as they are done separately.
Another unintentional result of legalizing marijuana is that it is no longer considered contraband in local jails, “so now we’re making it clear that cannabis would be contraband for those folks,” says Duhigg.
The bill would also help legacy medical cannabis businesses overcome a hurdle that makes it difficult for them to convert to a normal corporation if they wish to sell recreational products. The state’s Department of Health required medical cannabis businesses to register as nonprofit organizations. If passed, the new bill would give those legacy businesses a one-time chance to convert to a corporation.
Romero says she is also adding language to allow first responders to access medical cannabis and raising the plant count for micro businesses.