New Mexico's total cannabis sales have officially pushed past the $1 billion mark.
The state's Regulation & Licensing Department recently provided sales figures for February 2024. New Mexico saw nearly $48 million in total sales including approximately $12 million in medical and more than $35 million in recreational. That figure comes from more than one million total transactions across more than 1,000 dispensaries in the state.
It also takes New Mexico's all-time sales total to just over $1 billion. Adult-use accounts for about $678 million and medical cannabis accounts for about $331 million of that total.
Adult-use sales have been gradually rising in New Mexico since August 2022. During that same time period, medical cannabis sales have been slowly decreasing.
The milestone for New Mexico's legal cannabis market comes as the state is preparing to further crackdown on the illegal market.
Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham this month signed Senate Bill 6, a bill that makes several major changes to the Cannabis Regulation Act, including giving the Cannabis Control Division (CCD) of the New Mexico Regulation and Licensing Department (NMRLD) more enforcement powers to protect against unlicensed and illegal cannabis activity.
Key elements of the new laws include:
- Providing authority for the Cannabis Control Division of the NMRLD to obtain federal criminal history background check information on applicants
- Increasing criminal penalties for unlicensed cannabis activity
- Clarifying the amount of cannabis products that would result in a trafficking charge and increasing criminal penalties associated with trafficking
- Expanding the list of crimes that would prevent someone from getting a cannabis license
- Allowing individuals to possess both a license issued under the Liquor Control Act and a license issued under the Cannabis Regulation Act while prohibiting the co-location of the two license types
- Changing cannabis packaging requirements to further protect youth from accessing cannabis products
