Marijuana Legalization in New Mexico

High times in the Land of Enchantment

Apr 10, 2021

I asked New Mexico resident Craig Goldsmith to comment on the New Mexico Legislature passing a bill legalizing recreational use of marijuana, making it the 16th state to do so. New Mexico has had robust medical marijuana legalization since 2007.

First, some context. New Mexico remains the *only* state in the Union without a full-time legislature. Our bi-cameral representative body meets once per year. In even-numbered years the legislators meet for only sixty days near the beginning of the year. In odd-numbered years, they meet for a mere thirty days. The thirty-day sessions are also unusual in that- with the exception of direct budget-related items- only the governor may introduce legislation.

One other bit of context relevant to this discussion- the New Mexico constitution prohibits what are commonly called "ballot initiatives", i.e., creating laws based on voter sentiment at the voting booth. So if you want something done in New Mexico, you have to get the legislature and governor on board.

The result is that A) our legislators have to keep "day jobs", as they receive only a per diem during the sessions, B) there is never, ever enough time to actually get the business of the state done, and C) every two years the legislative agenda is dominated by the governor, with the concomitant pushback by legislators (even those of the governor's own party) who hate, hate, hate being hamstrung.

But there's an out- at any time the governor can call what is termed a "special session" and call the legislature back to work. This is not rare, but it is uncommon. Partly because it has to be funded separately, and everybody hates spending the money. Generally, special sessions have been called during serious emergencies, or when a budget fails to pass the legislature, etc. But 2021 was special: after three years of attempts at getting recreational marijuana legalization passed it would be taken up.

But we digress- let's talk about the soon-to-be big business of getting high legally. For a number of years, the New Mexico House has consistently passed recreational legalization, including social justice components such as complete expungement of non-violent marijuana-related crimes that would have been legal under the legislation. These efforts routinely died in the Senate. Furthermore, former Governor Martinez had promised to veto any such legislation.

The came Governor Lujan Grisham, the 2020 election, and the 2021 "short" session.

Grisham made legalization a priority, for two main reasons. First, she was tired of seeing Colorado's legalization sucking tourism and tax dollars from New Mexico. Second, she felt that the criminalization of an activity in which nearly 80% of New Mexicans freely admit participation demonstrated a total waste of law enforcement and corrections personnel and funds, made criminals out of citizens doing something fairly benign, and statistically affected people of color to a much higher degree.

In the 2020 elections, at least seven candidates for the state senate ran against incumbents. All promised to make recreational marijuana legalization a priority. They won.

As the January 2021 legislation session approached Governor Lujan Grisham assured the state that legalization would be on the agenda (remember- in odd-numbered years only the Governor can introduce legislation). And now we finally get to the nitty-gritty of the legalization effort, and some of the idiosyncrasies specific to New Mexico.

Broadly speaking, the marijuana legislation proposed that:

- recreation use would be legal
- citizens could grow six plants per person, max twelve per household
- limited absolute numbers of plants for commercial grow operations
(to allow mom-and-pops to compete against the big grows)
- no tax on medical marijuana, but a phased-in tax on recreational
- expungement of previous non-violent marijuana convictions that would
have been legal activity under the new law
- spending collected taxes on communities "of color" where previous
enforcement had an adverse effect
- a given community can regulate where (and how many) dispensaries can
be located
- last but not least, "on-premises" consumption of marijuana will be
allowed where licensed, i.e., "marijuana bars"

The legislation passed the House but failed to come to a vote in the Senate during the waning hours of the session. The failure hung on two issues, with some Democrats crossing party lines against the legislation: expungement and the use of water by big growers (more on that below). Governor Lujan Grisham promised to call a special session immediately (and pissing off legislators on both sides who felt that tax issues, COVID issues, etc, warranted attention, not getting high).

During the special session, the legislation was split into two pieces- one handling use and grow, and one handling expungement. The idea was that if expungement would become a sticking point, at least recreational use generally would move forward. After a session of just a few days, both pieces of legislation passed the House and Senate. Recreational use (and growing) will be legal in New Mexico "on or before April 1, 2021".

But that still leaves the very, very contentious issue of water usage, which was not really addressed. New Mexico has been in a sustained drought, for, oh, about seven hundred years. In recent years water deliveries (via our extensive and antiquated "ditch" system") have been severely curtailed to agricultural users. The concern that water will literally get sucked up into cannabis plants instead of being used for keeping river flows going, for growing food and feed, is perfectly reasonable and hasn't really been addressed.

As the new licensing and regulatory systems get put into place ahead of April 1, 2021, I expect there to be more conflict of this particular aspect of what will be a new (and large) segment of water users. And in the past, there have been "protests" of water users demanding their fair share, and lobbying the various agencies involved.

We'll end with a brief perspective on federal legalization. My own take is that until two-thirds to three-quarters of the states legalize recreational cannabis, there will be no movement at the federal level. I don't see cover for the Republicans in Congress on this issue- although their putative "small government" ethos dictates they should favor legalization. Nor is there cover for red/purple state Democrats. Nor will there ever be. However, once a super-majority of states have legalized, big finance will be unable to resist lobbying for national legalization- there will be *way* too much money floating around and they will want it *so* badly. Until then, fat chance.

Craig Goldsmith is a graphic designer living and working in Albuquerque, NM. He can be found online at www.1uffakind.com.

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