Reply #9: A response [View All]

[Fly by night]

I have provided medical cannabis to sick and dying people for the past two decades. The majority of these patients used about one ounce a week. Of course, I provided it free of charge so they did not have to ration a ridiculously expensive medicine but could use it as needed.

Your own math suggests that pot in your local area costs $400/ounce. It is not surprising that patients in your area would have to ration their medicine. BTW, I have heard of patients having to pay as much as $600/ounce. Just like privatized medicine, charging patients that much for medical cannabis is immoral.

As far as the ounce/week production, I would presume that most producers would choose to grow outdoors, since New Mexico's climate is ideal for superior medical cannabis production. If the producers follow the plant limits imposed by the state, they could not have any more than 24 plants in flowering state (the remaining 72 would have to be in vegetative state -- AND under 12 inches tall and twelve inches wide -- to be legal). Using the DEA estimates of four ounces of harvestable bud per plant (which, BTW, has been my general experience, though I have certainly produced more per plant occasionally and less more often), the producers' harvest would be about four pounds of bud to last those six patients for an entire year until the next harvest. That's a little more than 10 ounces per patient to last them the entire year.

If producers decide to grow indoors, they would still face the same limits. In that case, moving 12 inch tall vegetative plants to the flowering stage (and averaging 8 weeks from then until harvest) would result in plants that are still pretty small at harvest. One NM producer I know (who has decades of indoor experience) told me that two ounces of bud per plant would be an exceptional harvest, with one ounce per plant being more common under those circumstances. Neither of those harvest amounts would meet most patients' needs even in the short run, again in my experience.

I am sure the DEA is laughing out loud that, once again, fear of the feds has resulted in the castration of an excellent piece of medical cannabis legislation.

I am happy to share more about the problems with this New Mexico legislation if DUers will PM me.