Beginning next year, New Mexico will start its own legal recreational market and while this is great news for the state, it may be bad news for the neighboring state of Colorado.
It was at the beginning of April that New Mexico’s governor Michelle Lujan Grisham signed legislation to legalize the plant recreationally making the state the 17th state in the country to do so.
In a Denver7 report, with Denver7 speaking to a Trinidad dispensary owner, the station has found out just how important it is for some dispensaries in Colorado to rely on out of state customers.
Colorado has seen over $10 billion in marijuana sales since 2014 when recreational marijuana went on sale in the state. The state has relied on people from around the country coming to visit and buy and consume marijuana products.
With New Mexico about to start their own sales, this could eliminate a big line of revenue that Colorado dispensaries had relied on near the border of the two states.
Trinidad is one of those cities, that sits north of the border of Colorado and New Mexico and has relied on the “border model” to survive.
“Right now, about 45% [of customers] came from Texas, 20% came from New Mexico,” said Michael Evans to Denver 7. Evans is the general manager of The Other Place is Greener dispensary.
“When New Mexico does go legal, we will literally be cut off at Raton Pass. They’ll have no reason to continue driving through New Mexico to come enjoy the benefits of our recreational marijuana,” Evans added.
New Mexico’s new law allows for “cannabis consumption areas.” These will be state-approved, licensed venues both indoor and outdoor where people will be permitted to consume marijuana in designated hotel rooms, casinos, cigar bars and tobacco stores.
With this not being allowed in Colorado, it could also impact travel to the state for the plant.
“We have to incentivize them to just continue traveling here so we can see this increased revenue,” Evans said. “Trinidad has been a boom bust city. Right now, we’re in a boom, and we need to be doing everything thing we can do not to bust and that is getting ahead of these other states.”
