Welcome back. Let's catch up.

It was a historic vote when the state House approved legalization of recreational marijuana Thursday night on a narrow 36-34 vote and sent it to the Senate. But there's still plenty of skepticism that state government is equipped to get into the marijuana distribution business, as the bill mandates. They cite state agencies like the Children Youth and Families Department (CYFD) and MVD that struggle to get their jobs right and wonder how state-run marijuana shops would fare in a state where bureaucracy so often goes awry. Why not wait? The federal legalization of marijuana appears, if not around the corner, at least happening in the foreseeable future:

A growing list of Democratic presidential contenders want the U.S. government to legalize marijuana, reflecting a nationwide shift as more Americans look favorably on cannabis. Making marijuana legal at the federal level is the “smart thing to do,” says California Sen. Kamala Harris, a former prosecutor whose home state is the nation’s largest legal pot shop. New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, a prominent legalization advocate on Capitol Hill, says the war on drugs has been a “war on people.” 

The go slow pot crowd says having a federal regulatory umbrella for pot distribution--one with decades of experience dealing with alcohol and drugs--makes much more sense than leaving it to a state that has been hapless in trying to deal with an epidemic of drug abuse that, among other things, has precipitated a years-long ABQ crime wave.

Several anti-legalization lawmakers say one of the more misleading (and perhaps nonsensical) arguments heard in favor of legalization during the House debate was that it would somehow break up the international drug cartels. But the cartels have already beefed up their distribution of much more dangerous drugs like meth, heroin and fentanyl as more states legalize weed. Do we want to legalize those as well?

We were quizzical when NM GOP Chairman Steve Pearce decided to pen an anti-legalization op-ed recently, but with three GOP state Senators lobbying  R's on the Senate Finance Committee to get the bill through in the final days, maybe Pearce chose the right topic after all.

Simple decriminalization of marijuana, as proposed by State Senator Joe Cervantes, would address a chief concern that legalization advocates say they have--putting a halt to the arrest and jailing of low income people of color for possession of small amounts of cannabis.

But Joe's plan is ridiculed as old-fashioned, even as the national marijuana advocates dismiss the unique drug culture in NM that has been embedded for generations and has caused untold human suffering and loss of life.

It is indeed different here than in the more wealthy states that are taking the dive into legalized marijuana. Much different. The population here is much more vulnerable. Maybe the Senate Finance Committee will get that.