Andy Lyman
If Mayor Alan Webber’s proposal is approved, Picuris Pueblo would be granted an exception to open a dispensary downtown, across the street from Rocky Mountain Cannabis.
The Santa Fe City Council is set to consider legislation that would create an exception for tribal-owned cannabis companies, easing requirements for how much space must exist between pot shops.
The governing body didn’t arrive at this point on its own.
Mayor Alan Webber’s proposal, rife with byzantine, conditional language, comes after a Picuris Pueblo-owned business encountered long delays with the state’s license approval process. The pueblo’s lawyer says the situation echos a long history of government harassment in the cannabis space.
The proposed amendment would take a grammatical scalpel to a portion of a city ordinance that requires 400 feet between cannabis retail businesses. The particulars are ultra-confusing and oddly specific, so buckle up: If a tribal-owned cannabis company applies for a state license before another, non-Native-owned company, but the tribal company isn’t approved first, the distance requirement would be effectively waived.
The proposal represents the city’s attempt “to be a good neighbor” to Picuris Pueblo, Webber tells SFR, and follows an out-of-state company winning state license approval faster than the time it took for Picuris.
“The pueblo and the governor have been very patient and his tribal leadership has been patient as we try to make something that went wrong for them go right for them,” Webber says.
The pueblo’s lawyer, Richard Hughes, tells SFR Picuris Smokes got verification from the city that the company’s preferred dispensary location—an old bank building on the corner of West Alameda Street and Sandoval Street—fit within the local cannabis zoning requirements, then went to the state for a license. The state’s Cannabis Control Division requires business applicants to show they have local approval before a state license is issued. Most New Mexico cities—Santa Fe included—won’t provide an official business license for dispensaries until the state issues a license, creating a bureaucratic ouroboros.
Picuris Smokes began the application process for a state license in December 2021, then waited for approval. Unbeknownst to the pueblo, officials had not formally submitted the application, so it sat in limbo until they followed up the following May, according to the state. From there, a series of technical issues slowed down the application before it was approved in August 2022.
Colorado-based Rocky Mountain Cannabis applied in February and was quickly approved for a location about 300 feet from Picuris’ bank building.
Bernice Geiger, a spokeswoman for the Regulation and Licensing Department, which oversees the Cannabis Control Division, would not make anyone available for an interview to explain what happened with Picuris’ application. Instead, Geiger answered some of SFR’s questions in an email, writing that once the tribe inquired about the status of its application in May 2022, the wheels started moving.
The division still needed a “location attestation” and authorization from the state Department of Public Safety, which required Picuris Gov. Craig Quanchello to provide fingerprints, Geiger writes.
By August, the pueblo had addressed the technicalities, and the state issued a license, she adds.
“Our view is the process was initiated on Dec. 23,” 2021, Hughes tells SFR. “Yes, it took months for people to get clear as to how it should be handled, but I believe [the pueblo’s finance director] that he was trying to follow-up diligently to comply with RLD’s requirements and it just took that long to get it all together.”
The Cannabis Regulation Act allows, but does not require, cities to create proximity laws such as the one Santa Fe adopted. Webber acknowledges he was present when the City Council passed Santa Fe’s cannabis rules, but he does not recall the specific reasoning.
Instead, he hypothesizes that zoning officials and city councilors based the idea of spacing out dispensaries on how the city code applies to bars and liquor stores.
Delayed or denied approval would no doubt be a setback at best for many cannabis business hopefuls, but for the Picuris Pueblo the hangup is just the latest in years of attempts at economic prosperity, despite pushback from the feds.
Most recently, Hughes says, a Bureau of Indian Affairs officer confiscated cannabis seeds intended to start a legal grow, spurring the pueblo to try an operation off sovereign land.
“The idea of trying to get a dispensary here in Santa Fe was one that seemed like it had some real promise for generating revenue for the pueblo,” Hughes says. “Of course, it’s always important to remember, this is not money that goes into somebody’s pocket [unlike cannabis companies with CEOs and shareholders]. This is money that is intended to provide funding for governmental services for a pueblo whose members are largely below the poverty line.”
