Nation’s Only Licensed Marijuana Distributor Sees No Panacea

A recent amendment to New Mexico’s medical-marijuana law allows producers of the drug to get licensed as legitimate medical suppliers. But the state’s (and the nation’s) sole recipient of a marijuana producer’s license said she lives in fear of theft or prosecution and doesn’t want her identity revealed, the New York Times reported Oct. 10.

The operator of a Santa Fe nonprofit that grows and sells medical marijuana under state license said she is “totally paranoid” despite a law intended to give medical users a legitimate alternative to buying street drugs. The Santa Fe Institute grows its marijuana in a secret warehouse in a rural community, protected by steel doors, carbon filters to keep odors from leaking out, and a high-tech alarm system.

New Mexico lawmakers hoped the licensure system would be an improvement over the largely unregulated “compassion centers” that provide medical marijuana in other states.

Patient demand for the drug has been high in New Mexico, and despite the challenges 20 more nonprofits are seeking state licenses to grow and distribute medical marijuana. However, neither the state health department or the prospective providers themselves have made the applicant names public.

“As you can probably imagine, we’ve had all manner of interesting people come forward and say, ’We want to be your producers,’” said Alfredo Vigil, the New Mexico health secretary. “If we do this in some uncontrolled fashion and some big bad thing happens, the whole program comes crashing down.”