State extends medical pot users’ deadline

Some expirations will be delayed automatically for 60 days, DOH says

SANTA FE — The state Department of Health, under fire for a backlog in processing applications, announced Friday that some current medical marijuana patients will get extensions of up to 60 days when their identification cards expire.

That will allow them to continue buying medical marijuana from licensed producers while their renewal applications are pending.

According to a posting on the department’s website, the automatic extensions apply to those whose cards expire between June 15 and Dec. 31 of this year.

The department says it is working on applications that were submitted in July; the June applications have been processed.

The agency “is implementing this temporary change in an abundance of caution, to ensure that patients’ enrollments in the program do not lapse while applications are being processed,” the website said.

Patients must go through the renewal process annually because the ID cards expire one year after they’re granted.

State law requires the agency to approve or deny applications within 30 days, but the department says it has been taking about 42 days to process them — down from 60 days earlier this year.

The medical marijuana program has experienced “unprecedented growth,” according to department spokesman David Morgan. It has added more than 9,000 patients since December 2015, and has 29,165 patients as of this month.

The department said it has notified state and local law enforcement of the extended enrollments, but cautioned medical cannabis patients to keep their ID cards with them even if the cards have expired.

Legislators at a hearing two weeks ago said the department wasn’t doing enough to cut the backlog and suggested it could be held in contempt for violating the law.

One of the state’s major medical marijuana producers, Ultra Health, said Friday that medical marijuana patients in New Mexico paid producers nearly $22 million in the first six months of 2016, and the industry could take in $48 million by the end of the year.

The revenue of more than $21.8 million in the six months that ended June 30 is a 67 percent increase over the same period a year ago, according to the company. Ultra Health said it obtained the numbers through a public records request to the Department of Health.

Ultra Health said it was among four producers that had patient sales of over $1 million in the second quarter of 2016.

“The New Mexico medical cannabis program continues to grow rapidly even with delays in patients receiving their cards, the highest license fees in the country and the lowest allowed plant count for cultivation,” Ultra Health CEO Duke Rodriguez said in a statement.

Ultra Health is suing the Department of Health, alleging that its limit of 450 plants per licensed producer is arbitrary and should be scrapped.