Jacob Candelaria

Senate approves effort to clarify medical cannabis reciprocity

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The New Mexico Senate approved on Monday a bill that would more narrowly define medical cannabis reciprocity by a 28-10 vote. 

Sponsored by Sen. Jerry Ortiz y Pino, D-Albuquerque, SB 340 would specify that reciprocal cannabis patients in New Mexico cannot be a local resident and that reciprocal patients must reside in the state where they are approved by a medical professional to use medical cannabis. Ortiz y Pino said since New Mexico began honoring reciprocity with other states that have legalized medical cannabis, a number of people from Texas started obtaining authorization to use medical cannabis in California and then using that authorization in New Mexico as reciprocal patients. 

“This is a bill that is an effort at preventing some of the abuses that have begun creeping into our medical cannabis program in the state,” Ortiz y Pino said. 

While most of the comments from Senators were in support of the bill, Sen. Jacob Candelaria, D-Albuquerque, who has also served as legal counsel for the medical cannabis producer Ultra Health, took issue with the proposal. 

Candelaria, who has also been open about being a medical cannabis patient, shared his struggles with PTSD as a victim of rape when he was a child. Candelaria also said he took issue with comments from Senate Republicans inferring that many of the 108,000 patients in New Mexico are using the state’s medical cannabis program as de facto legalization. 

“I encourage us to stop making assumptions about people’s motives,” Candelaria said. 

Candelaria also unsuccessfully offered up an amendment to the bill that would have increased the amount of cannabis qualified patients can buy each day. Currently, Department of Health rules allow patients to purchase 230 units in a rolling 90-day period. The department defines a unit as one gram of flower or bud or 250 milligrams of concentrate.

2021 Legislative Session

Medical cannabis reciprocity bill heads to the Senate floor

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A state Senate committee narrowly advanced a bill Sunday that would prevent New Mexico residents from becoming reciprocal cannabis patients by a 3-2 vote. 

Sen. Jerry Ortiz y Pino, D-Albuquerque, the sponsor of SB 340, said the law change is necessary to ensure integrity of the state’s Medical Cannabis Program. He said current patients could suffer if New Mexicans who do not qualify for medical cannabis bypass the system and qualify through a state like California, which is more lax with medical cannabis qualifications and residency requirements. 

“If we loosen the door this way, and let our medical program be slowly deteriorated and reduce in its effectiveness, those people are going to be left on the outside looking in,” Ortiz y Pino said. 

Committee member and Senate President Pro Tem Mimi Stewart, D-Albuquerque, was one of the two members who voted against the bill. Stewart questioned what purpose the bill serves with the possibility of full cannabis legalization on the horizon. 

“We’re about to legalize adult-use cannabis, hopefully. Maybe. We’ve only got six days,” Stewart said.

Jacob Candelaria

NM court rules DOH can limit medical cannabis reciprocity through rules

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A state district court judge ruled Thursday that the New Mexico Department of Health is allowed to limit who can become a reciprocal medical cannabis patient through department rules. 

First Judicial District Court Judge Matthew Wilson said that his previous order to stop the department from proceeding with an emergency rule change regarding reciprocity did not prohibit the department from adopting rules regarding reciprocity in general. 

 “The writ does not say that the requirements for reciprocal participation imposed by the emergency rule and the mandate were incompatible with the [state law] or go beyond the Department of Health’s rulemaking authority,” Wilson said during the hearing on Thursday. “The writ does not forbid the creation or promulgation of a regulation through normal rulemaking process the court did not conclude the emergency rule conflicted with the act.”

The New Mexico Legislature approved medical cannabis patient reciprocity in 2019 as part of a larger overhaul to the state’s medical cannabis program. Last summer the state’s Medical Cannabis Program, overseen by the Department of Health, finalized rules for reciprocity, allowing medical cannabis patients from other states and jurisdictions to purchase and consume their medicine in New Mexico. By September, the Medical Cannabis Program notified New Mexico Dispensaries of an emergency rule change that would require reciprocal patients to provide a matching medical cannabis authorization and identification card. The program also said reciprocal patients could not be a New Mexico resident, which meant New Mexico residents could not use a medical cannabis authorization from another state with looser restrictions.

Medical Cannabis Program

Some raise concerns about out-of-state, reciprocal patients in the time of COVID-19

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Amid the COVID-19 pandemic the New Mexico Department of Health approved rules that put into practice a state law allowing medical cannabis patients from other states to buy, possess and use medical cannabis in New Mexico. 

The law was passed in 2019 as part of a massive statutory change for medical cannabis. That law also included a separate provision that many have argued would have allowed non-residents of New Mexico to become a New Mexico medical cannabis patient. 

But in 2020 lawmakers, backed by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham and the DOH, passed a law that made sure that only those who were medical cannabis patients in other states already could qualify for New Mexico’s program. 

They argued that allowing people from nearby states without a medical cannabis program to enroll in the New Mexico Medical Cannabis Program could invite unwanted federal scrutiny. Through legislative debate and public testimony, legislators and public health officials argued that the reciprocity provision in the 2019 law would be adequate enough to provide medicine to non-resident, medical cannabis patients spending time in New Mexico and would provide enough legitimacy to keep the federal government from intervening. 

But even now that the law reverted to only allow New Mexico residents and those already enrolled in a medical cannabis program to buy, possess and use it in the state, there seems to be a loophole of sorts that may allow exactly what the governor and state officials warned against. In 2019, the New Mexico Legislature approved a massive overhaul to the state’s medical cannabis law. The changes included protection from being fired from a job or losing parental custody just for being a medical cannabis patient.