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Morning Word
NM hits $300 mil as legal adult cannabis sales turns 1
Adult recreational cannabis sales last month set records and the approximate $32 million sent New Mexico just over the $300 million mark as it hit the April 1 one-year anniversary of the enactment of the Cannabis Regulation Act. “In just one year, hundreds of millions of dollars in economic activity has been generated in communities across the state, the number of businesses continues to increase and thousands of New Mexicans are employed by this new industry,” Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham said in a statement. “I’m excited to see what the future holds as we continue to develop an innovative and safe adult-use cannabis industry.” Since April 2022, the state has also issued approximately 2,000 cannabis licenses, including 633 cannabis retailers, 351 producers, 415 micro producers and 507 manufacturers. Monthly sales have been relatively consistent, with last month marking the highest adult-use sales at $32.3 million. As expected, Albuquerque, Las Cruces and Santa Fe had the highest number of sales in the first year. Last month, Santa Fe ranked third with just over $2 million (a record and just a hair over December sales). All told, in the last year, Albuquerque had approximately $96 million in recreational sales; Las Cruces sold $22.4 million; and Santa Fe had about $22.2 million. Bordertown Sunland Park sold $19.4 million in recreational cannabis, according to the state data.
NM will receive $40 mil for high-speed internet
US Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack visited New Mexico yesterday as part of President Biden’s “Investing in America” tour highlighting what states can expect as a result of the Inflation Reduction Act, the CHIPS and Science Act, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, and the American Rescue Plan. As part of the same tour, Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg is slated to visit Albuquerque and Las Cruces today. In yesterday’s visit, Vilsack, along with the state’s congressional delegation, discussed $40 million the state is receiving for high-speed internet projects in rural areas. The funding comes via the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law through the fourth funding round of the ReConnect Program. The Western New Mexico Telephone Company Inc. is receiving a $23.8 million grant for Catron County; the ENMR Telephone Cooperative is receiving a $2.6 million grant to benefit De Baca, Guadalupe, Harding, Quay, San Miguel, Socorro and Union counties; and the Peñasco Valley Telephone Cooperative is receiving $13.9 million that will benefit 550 people, 48 farms and 11 businesses in Chaves, Eddy, Otero and Lincoln counties.
New law renders free speech lawsuit moot
Lobbyist Marianna Anaya will be withdrawing her First Amendment lawsuit against the state Legislative Ethics Committee, now that a newly signed law renders it moot. House Bill 169, signed last week by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, removes a provision in state law that muzzled people who filed complaints with the LEC, but not those against whom such complaints were filed. Case in point: Anaya filed a formal complaint in early 2022 with the Legislative Council Service alleging Sen. Daniel Ivey-Soto, D-Albuquerque, had sexually harassed and bullied her multiple times during prior legislative sessions. A small panel of lawmakers ultimately voted not to hear the complaint, but a report leaked to SFR last September showed contract counsel for the Legislature found probable cause that Ivey-Soto had violated the body’s anti-harassment policy. Anaya, meanwhile, was prohibited by law from speaking publicly about her complaint, while Ivey-Soto declared in an Albuquerque Journal op-ed that he was exonerated. “There was a very distinct sort of flavor of home field advantage to the prior law, and that extended well beyond just Marianna’s particular allegation and particular investigative process,” Anaya’s lawyer Levi Monagle tells SFR.
Santa Fe sheriff announces pre-pilgrimage checkpoint
As the state heads into the holiday weekend, the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Department announced yesterday it will be conducting a DWI sobriety checkpoint this Thursday, April 6 as part of a community safety operation in concurrence with the Santuario de Chimayó pilgrimage. According to a news release, sheriff’s deputies will also conduct routine mobile patrols of the roadways leading to Chimayó throughout the Easter holiday weekend, during which deputies will look for impaired drivers, and increase traffic enforcement along routes of travel for pilgrims trekking to Chimayó. Sheriff Adan Mendoza in the release reminds “the motoring public to be hyper vigilant this week as pilgrimage walkers are already making the trek to the Santuario in Chimayó,” and this week is “high-risk for pilgrims and motorists.” People who are walking the route, who number in the thousands each year, “should dress appropriately in light-colored clothing, stay hydrated and if walking during the night time hours please wear reflective material or have a flashlight. The Sheriff’s Office will be handing out glow sticks at various locations along the route of the pilgrimage on Thursday night.”
COVID-19 by the numbers
Reported April 3: New cases: 408 (includes the weekend); 675,518 total cases. Deaths: 12; Santa Fe County has had 402 total deaths; 9,127 total fatalities statewide. Statewide hospitalizations: 79; patients on ventilators: nine
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s most recent March 30 “community levels” map shows improvement for New Mexico, with just two counties—Cibola and McKinley—yellow with medium levels, down from four last week, none red and the rest of the state with green—aka low—levels. Corresponding recommendations for each level can be found here.
Resources: Receive four free at-home COVID-19 tests per household via COVIDTests.gov; Check availability for additional free COVID-19 tests through Project ACT; CDC interactive booster eligibility tool; NM DOH vaccine & booster registration; CDC isolation and exposure interactive tool; COVID-19 treatment info; NMDOH immunocompromised tool kit. People seeking treatment who do not have a medical provider can call NMDOH’s COVID-19 hotline at 1-855-600-3453. DOH encourages residents to download the NM Notify app and to report positive COVID-19 home tests on the app.
You can read all of SFR’s COVID-19 coverage here.
Listen up
We’ve just stumbled across the City Climate Corner webcast, which “explores how small and mid-sized cities are tackling climate change and moving toward an equitable and sustainable future.” Hosted by Minnesota state Rep. Larry Kraft and Minnesota climate consultant Abby Finis, the podcast’s first episode of the year (which aired at the end of March) focuses on Santa Fe County and its goals to conserve 30% of its land and water by 2030, with an interview with County Sustainability Manager Jacqueline Beam (here’s SFR’s interview with Beam from last year).
The sound of a changing climate
New Mexico-based composer John Luther Adams last week premiered his newest work, Vespers of the Blessed Earth, in Philadelphia and then at Carnegie Hall in New York. A longtime Alaska resident, Adams moved somewhere in southern New Mexico at some point during the pandemic (he’s previously described his whereabouts as “an undisclosed location in the Chihuahuan Desert”). In a recent video interview from New Mexico with the New York Times, Adams discussed the new 50-minute work, a portion of which includes incantation of the Latin binomials of 192 endangered species, plus the one that threatens them all and is thus then also threatened: Homo sapiens. “We’ve got to face that the situation is dire and it’s going to get worse before it gets better,” Adams said to the Times regarding the climate crisis, and his musical response therein. “The only way it’s going to get better is if we face the harsh, stark, sobering, actually terrifying realities ahead of us—and act on them.” That being said, the Times’ review of last weekend’s premieres described the work as a “tear-splattered departure” from Adams’ usual style (no, that is not a compliment). “Rarely, if ever, has Adams written music that has been so explicitly felt, and more directly stated—but also so ineffective,” Joshua Barone writes: “Over five sections, this tear-splattered score mourns and damns, and declares where in the past Adams might have simply observed.”
Prayer hands
As the one-year anniversary for the onset of last year’s devastating Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon Fiire approaches (April 6), Slate magazine examines how evangelical groups are stepping in to help when the federal government doesn’t and, in some cases, taking advantage of disasters to proselytize. The story begins in New Mexico with Pendaries’ resident Art Vigil, who lived on the east side of Hermit’s Peak for decades until he lost everything. “A lot of people thought FEMA was coming through like a knight in shining armor,” Vigil tells Slate. Instead, the Federal Emergency Management Agency denied many residents’ claims. In Vigil’s case, he says he asked for help clearing the destroyed portions of his home, but the FEMA contractor, instead, worked around the four adobe walls that remained “standing but structurally unsound.” The Mennonite volunteers from Samaritan’s Purse, on the other hand, “took all the metal debris, questions unasked,” he said. “They were the first ones there.” When one asked Vigil if he could read him “a few words of the Lord,” Vigil didn’t mind; he was grateful. The experience, Slate reports, is becoming commonplace among Americans recovering from disasters because even with improved funding for FEMA during the Biden presidency, “…the agency is simply not equipped to meet the gargantuan task of fully responding to more frequent and extreme hurricanes, floods, wildfires, and other climate disasters.”
Caution to the wind
The National Weather Service forecasts another very windy day, with critical fire weather across the state, occasional gusts of 55 to 65 mph across much of southwestern, central and eastern New Mexico, with higher gusts of 70 to 80 mph possible over the south central mountains. Santa Fe may have areas of blowing dust after noon with southwest wind 15 to 20 mph increasing to 25 to 30 mph in the afternoon with gusts as high as 45 mph. It will also be partly sunny, with a high temperature near 45 degrees. Tonight will also be windy, with a low temperature around 17 degrees (tomorrow looks better).
Thanks for reading! The Word did not set out to overload today’s newsletter with climate change news but, having done so, offers this story about Parmesan Espresso Martinis (yes, it’s a TikTok trend) as a distracting counterweight.
