By Patrick Lohmann, Source NM
More than three years after New Mexico legalized recreational marijuana, the state has become a national poster-child for recreational marijuana sales, and not in a good way, argues state Sen. Joseph Cervantes (D-Las Cruces).
“We’ve become the mecca for ‘mota’,” Cervantes said, using a slang term for marijuana common in New Mexico. “And we have to ask ourselves: Is that really what we want to be?”
He and other state lawmakers on the Legislature’s interim Courts and Criminal Justice Committee met Monday morning in Taos to discuss the proliferation of shops across the state, as well as their hopes for a new band of cannabis officers tasked with enforcing laws the Legislature enacted when it legalized recreational marijuana in April 2022.