After working in the Cannabis industry since 2016, the wonderful cannabis company I worked for closed due to a lot of strangeness in the New Mexico cannabis industry rules and regulations, (definitely another story!). So now I’m finally back to Cannagramma blogging to help medical cannabis patients and newbies to cannabis. This new post is to encourage people who qualify for medical cannabis cards in New Mexico to get one.
Get your Medical Cannabis Card!
1) Taxes – If you have a NM Medical Cannabis Card you will spend a LOT less money on your cannabis products. The current rules and regulations in our state made Medical Cannabis tax-free, just like our prescription medicine, so there will be no Gross Receipt and Cannabis Excise tax, and no other taxes that may be applied by different counties and municipalities. These taxes are all different amounts depending on where you are shopping, but they are very high and can increase in the future.
2) THC Content – Another huge reason for you to get a Medical Cannabis card is the difference in available “medible” products. (Medibles are what I call edible cannabis products, like cookies, gummies, drinks and more. It’s medicine!). If you don’t have the card, you can’t purchase any single package of any kind of medible over 100mg of THC. Each single edible item is only 10mg THC or less for recreational buyers. Medical cannabis patients can do much better and purchase medibles with a lot more THC per package and per individual item. It may seem that the 500mg package of gummies for medical users is too expensive, but the cost per dose, no matter what you consider your dose to be, is much less. If I buy a 100mg 10 pack of 10mg gummies for $18, each, a 10mg gummy per package is $1.80. Example: If I buy a 500mg pack of 10-50mg gummies for $40 and I cut each gummy into 4 pieces that are 12.5mg each I will then have 40-12.5mg gummies for $1 each. This is a much better way to do it. If you were to buy 5 of the 100 mg packs to equal the same 500mg of THC? Well, $18 x 5 packs is $90. That’s crazy.
3) Age and Safety – If you are under 21 years old, you can’t purchase legal cannabis products at a dispensary. If you are 18 years old and have a medical card you can purchase in a dispensary AND you are purchasing products that have been lab tested, which is required by law, making the products safer than what’s offered on the Black Market. Minors (under 18 years old) may qualify, but a designated and registered caregiver must apply on their behalf.
The NM Department of Health has all the info you need about Medical Cannabis Cards on their website. But if you want to make this even more simple, go to a provider that will do all the paperwork for you. There are many providers that will do this, but it is rare to get your own doctor or nurse practitioner to do it for you. My recommendation is a company called Balance Health NM, and this is not all they do. To make it even easier, Balanced Health provides their services via Telemedicine, so you can do this from home. Go to the Balanced Health website for more information about getting your card. You will need some medical records that confirm that you have the qualifying condition(s) required by the state.
You can view the list of qualifying conditions and the procedures to get your card on the DOH website’s medical cannabis pages, or check the updated list in this blog’s previous post.