New Mexico Medical Cannabis Program Makes Dire Mistake

By Chris “CJ” Dabbs

Dispensaries in New Mexico get the amount of medical cannabis a person is allowed to purchase incorrect, resulting in patients being turned down for medicinal purchases illegally. When the New Mexico Legislature passed the law allowing for medical use of marijuana, they specified that a patient must be able to receive an “adequate supply”, and then made an enormous mistake by giving a single person, the head of the New Mexico Department of Health, the ability to create Law by dictating how much an adequate supply was. Something Laws are not allowed to do.

Section 3. DEFINITIONS.–As used in the Lynn and Erin Compassionate Use Act:

A. “adequate supply” means an amount of cannabis, in any form approved by the department, possessed by a qualified patient or collectively possessed by a qualified patient and the qualified patient’s primary caregiver that is determined by rule of the department to be no more than reasonably necessary to ensure the uninterrupted availability of cannabis for a period of three months and that is derived solely from an intrastate source

https://nmhealth.org/publication/view/regulation/128/

Then the New Mexico Department of Health sets the regulated amount that a patient is allowed to purchase to 230 grams of USABLE THC content over the course of three months, which is stated on the back of the medical cannabis program cards.

However, the dispensaries consider the 230 grams to be the entire weight of the flower itself, and not just the usable amount of THC found on the plant, which is in the range of approximately 1 – 1.6 mg, according to their packaging.

If that means they can test 1.07mg on the flower, that must be per gram of flower dry weight. The formula then would be, 1.07mg x 1000g = 1070 g. That means per New Mexico Department of Health rule, a person should more likely be able to purchase 1070 grams of dry flower per 3 Months instead of just the 230 grams the dispensaries were allowing before.

This misunderstanding of the law has resulted in patients, including myself, being turned down for their medicine.