New Mexico legislators are about to embark on an extraordinary legislative session that will be solely focused on the legalization of recreational marijuana. Efforts to legalize the selling of cannabis to adults 21 and older failed during the regular annual session, which ended March 20, because of divergent opinions on regulating a lucrative industry.
New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham has called legislators back to the Capitol to consider proposals to legalize recreational marijuana. The special legislative session will begin on Tuesday, according to Lujan Grisham. In the run-up to Good Friday and Easter festivities in a predominantly Roman Catholic state, House Republicans criticized the initiative as frivolous and insensitive. Marijuana law has been a top political and policy agenda for state Democrats after voters removed many legalization critics from the state Senate last year.
They would extend regulated recreational cannabis sales through the American Southwest, from California to the state border between New Mexico and Texas, where nonmedical marijuana is currently illegal.
“It’s a big economic development tool that we have at our disposal. And it is the right thing to do,” said Democratic state Rep. Javier Martinez.
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Republican Senator Cliff Pirtle of Roswell is calling for a free market policy with reduced taxes targeted at undercutting the black market, and a focus on employer access to a drug-free environment and public funding to protect traffic safety from marijuana-impaired drivers.
Existing medical marijuana producers are split on how to continue in the face of vigorous lobbying. Many citizens are afraid that unregulated business licenses and unregulated competition would threaten steady market rates, financial savings, and jobs.
“There’s just that opportunity to saturate the market and really damage the industry,” said Erik Briones, owner of a medical marijuana production Minerva Cana, a manufacturing and distribution business with about 70 employees.
New Mexico will be just the third or fourth state, after Illinois and Vermont, to make recreational cannabis legal through the legislative process. In Virginia, a marijuana bill has been approved and is pending signature by the governor.
Lujan Grisham has pushed for drug legalization to create opportunities and diversify the state government’s revenue, which others contend to depend on oil output. New Mexico has just over a billion dollars in cash reserves, not to mention $1.6 billion in new federal aid that can be used until 2024.
