Colorado mayor offers cannabis advice

Legalized recreational marijuana likely is coming to eastern New Mexico. The mayor of Trinidad, Colo., passed along some advice to the region after the experiencing the effects of legal weed in his community.

“Be very careful how many (marijuana dispensaries) you allow in your community,” Trinidad Mayor Phil Rico said in a recent telephone interview. “Be careful how close you put them to educational facilities. Be very careful if you have a historic district and how you control that. Be careful with your application process and make sure it's completely thorough.”

Licensed cannabis sales are set to begin across New Mexico no later than April 2022, and the state's Regulation and Licensing Department will begin issuing such licenses by January.

That means area communities might see legal weed by the first half of 2022. With neighboring Texas considered unlikely to legalize marijuana soon, that could mean a substantial amount of pot tourism from the Lone Star State and other states where it isn't legal.

Colorado voters legalized recreational marijuana in late 2012 and was one of the first states to do so.

By Rico's estimation, 26 marijuana-related businesses have set up shop in Trinidad, a town of about 8,000 people, 15 miles from New Mexico's north border.

Trinidad has one dispensary per every 300 residents - by far the heaviest concentration of cannabis-related businesses in Colorado.

The town's dispensaries come with names that include The Spot 420, The Green Solution, Strawberry Fields, The Other Place is Greener, Lucky Monkey Buds, Canna City, Highland Health and Tweedleaf.

Rico, a lifelong Trinidad resident who became mayor about five years ago, acknowledged the sales tax revenue from marijuana has been good for city finances.

Reports on Trinidad's website reveal it received more than $2 million in marijuana sales-tax revenue in 2017, the first year it was reported.

In the first three quarters of 2020, the city used more than $3.5 million of those sales taxes for dozens of expenditures, including a new brush hog, police and fire department equipment, city computer upgrades, COVID-19 relief to businesses and residents and a new HVAC system in city hall.

But Rico acknowledged drawbacks to legal cannabis as well.

“What it has attracted is a lot of homeless people and people standing on the corners, asking for money,” he said. “Our homeless population has increased, and I attribute that somewhat to the legalization.”

When asked about weighing the pluses and minuses of legal marijuana, Rico sighed and paused several seconds before answering.

“From the financial side, it's good,” he answered. “But from the social part, it has not been good because we've had some people, especially in the grocery store areas, have been in some confrontations with these people coming out of the store ... people begging and even some attacks.”

Rico said he was not aware of the extent of marijuana-impaired driving in Trinidad but said there is some, though such cases are difficult to prove.

He said Trinidad also was not prepared for the amount of interest from marijuana entrepreneurs.

“It was sort of a Wild West show at the beginning,” Rico said. “It was very open. We had to put a cap on (applications). We had 46 to 47 applications for marijuana and more than 100 various types of applications.

“You have to be careful with the numbers, or you can get overrun,” he added. “It created a mountain of paperwork for our staff at city hall.”

Rico said it wasn't unusual for a single recreational-marijuana application to total 200 pages once zoning and other requirements were accounted for. With multiple partners setting up shop, the page count could reach 400.

He said the city also tried to shield its historic district from weed shops.

“We wanted it to be more of a family-type atmosphere and not the bad smells (from marijuana),” Rico said. “That bad smell does create a major problem. For the historic district, we wanted to make sure that did not happen.”

Rico said smoking rooms not only create problems just from marijuana's odor, but also liability issues. As an example, he said a police officer who has to go into a smoking room while on duty might jeopardize his job because such exposure might cause him or her to fail a drug test.