NM's Medical Pot Program Has Slow, Cautious Start

DEBORAH BAKER

SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — Businessman Len Goodman owns a company that makes hand-painted art tiles, but these days his office desk is strewn with the raw materials of a new enterprise: fat, sweetly pungent marijuana buds.

Newly licensed by the state to produce and distribute medical marijuana, Goodman must decide which strains he will grow in a steel-doored industrial building somewhere in Santa Fe County that will soon be converted into a high-tech indoor greenhouse.

"Every one is different," Goodman said of the brownish buds in plastic bags. "It's like wine."

While California confronts a proliferation of pot shops and Colorado wrestles with regulations, New Mexico is slowly and quietly breathing life into a 2007 law that allows patients with certain medical conditions to get relief from marijuana.

The first state to license producers, New Mexico gave the OK to one nonprofit in March and four others last week.

Patients with a qualifying condition — there are 15 — must get recommendations from medical providers, apply to the Department of Health, then, if they are approved, reapply each year.