Business
New Mexico Pot Sales Hit Record in October
Licensed sales of recreational marijuana in New Mexico topped records for the fourth straight month in October, totaling nearly $40 million.
Regulated sales of cannabis hit record levels in New Mexico during October, with licensed sales of marijuana totaling nearly $40 million for the month, according to data released last week by the state’s Cannabis Control Division (CCD). October was the fourth straight month of record-breaking weed sales in New Mexico, where dispensaries launched regulated sales of adult-use cannabis in April.
Monthly sales of cannabis in October totaled $39.8 million, with recreational marijuana sales topping $25 million in New Mexico for the first time, according to CCD data updated on Thursday. Medical marijuana sales, however, saw a decline, dropping to $14.7 million last month, a new low since adult-use cannabis sales began earlier this year. Since April, dispensaries have sold a total of $161 million in recreational marijuana.
New Mexico Regulators Launch New Online Data Portal
The updated cannabis sales figures were provided via the state’s new Cannabis Reporting Online Portal, which began operating on Thursday afternoon. In addition to providing data on cannabis sales, the portal also offers other information on New Mexico’s cannabis industry, such as the number of licensed dispensaries operating in the state.
“A few months ago, CCD saw an opportunity to provide greater information about the New Mexico cannabis industry through a data portal similar to other states,” said Bernice Geiger, a spokeswoman with the New Mexico Regulation and Licensing Department. “We were able to capture data from our seed-to-sale software to further disseminate data in intuitive, customizable graphical form.”
Sales of adult-use cannabis were particularly strong in towns close to New Mexico’s border with Texas, where recreational marijuana is still illegal. In Sunland Park, sales of recreational marijuana topped $1.5 million in October, a new record for the town of only 20,000 residents. Hobbs, which sits along the border with west Texas, also saw a record-breaking month with $1.47 million in adult-use cannabis sales. Dispensaries in Clovis, also on the west Texas border, rang up $731,00 in recreational marijuana sales last month.
Reilly White, an associate professor with the University of New Mexico’s Anderson School of Management, told the Albuquerque Journal that cannabis sales are likely to remain strong in New Mexico’s southern and eastern border towns as long as recreational marijuana remains against the law in neighboring Texas.
“We’re likely going to see continued growth in month-to-month cannabis sales as the market becomes more mature,” White said, noting that border towns in Colorado have seen a dip in sales since recreational marijuana sales began in New Mexico earlier this year.
Adult-use cannabis sales were also helped, White said, by the influx of tourists visiting New Mexico for the 50th Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta, which brought thousands of visitors to the state during the first nine days of October. Albuquerque sales of recreational marijuana came to $8.1 million in October, a new record for the city.
“The Balloon Fiesta did result in a positive increase in sales for local cannabis firms, as greater tourism traffic boosted recreational use,” he said. “The big test ahead for the industry will likely be macroeconomic conditions in 2023 – if we have a recession, how will consumers cut back on recreational cannabis?”
Medical Marijuana Sales Decline
Despite the strong sales of adult-use cannabis, sales of medical marijuana in New Mexico continued to decline. Duke Rodriguez, president and CEO of medical cannabis provider Ultra Health, said that the drop in medical marijuana sales can likely be attributed to patients who are now obtaining cannabis from recreational marijuana dispensaries.
“Medical sales are reclassified into adult-use sales,” Rodriguez said. “They’re just being transferred from one bucket to the other.”
Ben Lewinger, the executive director of the New Mexico Cannabis Chamber of Commerce, said that other states have also seen a decline in medical marijuana sales following the legalization of adult-use cannabis. According to data from the New Mexico Department of Health, the number of medical marijuana patients in the state has dropped by 473 patients in the span of a year, with the total number of patients declining to 123,990 in September.
“We knew that the number of enrolled medical patients was going to contract, as it has in every other medical state that has shifted to adult use,” Lewinger said. “What’s important is that we continue to invest in the medical program by continuing to add more qualifying conditions so that more people can receive cannabis treatment, without paying taxes on their medicine.”
In August, after the state began its four-month run of record-breaking cannabis sales, New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham commented on the economic opportunities presented by regulated adult-use cannabis.
“These numbers show that the impressive sales generated in the first month of legalized recreational cannabis sales were no fluke – and this is only the beginning,” Grisham said in a statement from the governor’s office. “We’ve established a new industry that is already generating millions of dollars in local and state revenue and will continue to generate millions more in economic activity across the state, creating thousands of jobs for New Mexicans in communities both small and large.”
Source: https://hightimes.com/news/new-mexico-pot-sales-hit-record-in-october/
New Mexico regulators fined a cannabis operator nearly $300,000 and revoked its license after the company allegedly created fake reports in the state’s traceability software.
The New Mexico Cannabis Control Division (CCD) accused marijuana manufacturer and retailer Golden Roots of 11 violations, according to Albuquerque Business First.
Golden Roots operates the The Cannabis Revolution Dispensary.
The majority of the violations are related to the Albuquerque company’s improper use of BioTrack, which has been New Mexico’s track-and-trace vendor since 2015.
The CCD alleges Golden Roots reported marijuana production only two months after it had received its vertically integrated license, according to Albuquerque Business First.
Because cannabis takes longer than two months to be cultivated, the CCD was suspicious of the report.
After inspecting the company’s premises, the CCD alleged Golden Roots reported cultivation, transportation and sales in BioTrack but wasn’t able to provide officers who inspected the site evidence that the operator was cultivating cannabis.
In April, the CCD revoked Golden Roots’ license and issued a $10,000 fine, according to the news outlet.
The company requested a hearing, which the regulator scheduled for Sept. 1.
At the hearing, the CCD testified that the company’s dried-cannabis weights in BioTrack were suspicious because they didn’t seem to accurately reflect how much weight marijuana loses as it dries.
Company employees also poorly accounted for why they were making adjustments in the system of up to 24 pounds of cannabis, making comments such as “bad” or “mistake” in the software, Albuquerque Business First reported.
Golden Roots was fined $298,972.05 – the amount regulators allege the company made selling products that weren’t properly accounted for in BioTrack.
The CCD has been cracking down on cannabis operators accused of selling products procured from out-of-state or not grown legally:
- Regulators alleged in August that Albuquerque dispensary Sawmill Sweet Leaf sold out-of-state products and didn’t have a license for extraction.
- Paradise Exotics Distro lost its license in July after regulators alleged the company sold products made in California.
Golden Roots was the first alleged rulebreaker in New Mexico to be asked to pay a large fine.
Source: https://mjbizdaily.com/new-mexico-cannabis-operator-fined-loses-license-for-alleged-biotrack-fraud/
Four marijuana companies, including a multistate operator, have filed a lawsuit against U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland in which they allege the federal MJ prohibition under the Controlled Substances Act is no longer constitutional.
According to the complaint, filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts, retailer Canna Provisions, Treevit delivery service CEO Gyasi Sellers, cultivator Wiseacre Farm and MSO Verano Holdings Corp. are all harmed by “the federal government’s unconstitutional ban on cultivating, manufacturing, distributing, or possessing intrastate marijuana.”
Verano is headquartered in Chicago but has operations in Massachusetts; the other three operators are based in Massachusetts.
The lawsuit seeks a ruling that the “Controlled Substances Act is unconstitutional as applied to the intrastate cultivation, manufacture, possession, and distribution of marijuana pursuant to state law.”
The companies want the case to go before the U.S. Supreme Court.
They hired prominent law firm Boies Schiller Flexner to represent them.
The New York-based firm’s principal is David Boies, whose former clients include Microsoft, former presidential candidate Al Gore and Elizabeth Holmes’ disgraced startup Theranos.
Similar challenges to the federal Controlled Substances Act (CSA) have failed.
One such challenge led to a landmark Supreme Court decision in 2005.
In Gonzalez vs. Raich, the highest court in the United States ruled in a 6-3 decision that the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution gave Congress the power to outlaw marijuana federally, even though state laws allow the cultivation and sale of cannabis.
In the 18 years since that ruling, 23 states and the District of Columbia have legalized adult-use marijuana and the federal government has allowed a multibillion-dollar cannabis industry to thrive.
Since both Congress and the U.S. Department of Justice, currently headed by Garland, have declined to intervene in state-licensed marijuana markets, the key facts that led to the Supreme Court’s 2005 ruling “no longer apply,” Boies said in a statement Thursday.
“The Supreme Court has since made clear that the federal government lacks the authority to regulate purely intrastate commerce,” Boies said.
“Moreover, the facts on which those precedents are based are no longer true.”
Verano President Darren Weiss said in a statement the company is “prepared to bring this case all the way to the Supreme Court in order to align federal law with how Congress has acted for years.”
While the Biden administration’s push to reschedule marijuana would help solve marijuana operators’ federal tax woes, neither rescheduling nor modest Congressional reforms such as the SAFER Banking Act “solve the fundamental issue,” Weiss added.
“The application of the CSA to lawful state-run cannabis business is an unconstitutional overreach on state sovereignty that has led to decades of harm, failed businesses, lost jobs, and unsafe working conditions.”
Alabama regulators are targeting Dec. 1 to award the first batch of medical cannabis business licenses after the agency’s first two attempts were scrapped because of scoring errors and litigation.
The first licenses will be awarded to individual cultivators, delivery providers, processors, dispensaries and state testing labs, according to the Alabama Medical Cannabis Commission (AMCC).
Then, on Dec. 12, the AMCC will award licenses for vertically integrated operations, a designation set primarily for multistate operators.
Licenses are expected to be handed out 28 days after they have been awarded, so MMJ production could begin in early January, according to the Alabama Daily News.
That means MMJ products could be available for patients around early March, an AMCC spokesperson told the media outlet.
Regulators initially awarded 21 business licenses in June, only to void them after applicants alleged inconsistencies with how the applications were scored.
Then, in August, the state awarded 24 different licenses – 19 went to June recipients – only to reverse themselves again and scratch those licenses after spurned applicants filed lawsuits.
A state judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by Chicago-based MSO Verano Holdings Corp., but another lawsuit is pending.
Source: https://mjbizdaily.com/alabama-plans-to-award-medical-cannabis-licenses-dec-1/
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