Border Patrol reiterated its place this week after reviews of a whole bunch of hundreds of {dollars} value of product being seized within the state.
The U.S. Border Patrol has doubled down on actions its brokers took towards state-legal marijuana corporations in New Mexico in current months, and reiterated in a press release Thursday that anybody transporting hashish by way of considered one of its checkpoints may very well be arrested.
“El Paso Sector U.S. Border Patrol wish to remind the general public that, though medical and leisure marijuana could also be authorized in some U.S. States and Canada, the sale, possession, manufacturing, and distribution of marijuana or the facilitation of the aforementioned stay unlawful below U.S. federal legislation, given the classification of marijuana as a Schedule I managed substance,” the company mentioned in its assertion.
“Consequently, people violating the Managed Substances Act encountered whereas crossing the border, arriving at a U.S. port of entry, or at a Border Patrol checkpoint could also be deemed inadmissible and/or topic to, seizure, fines, and/or arrest,” it mentioned.
The assertion got here after New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham complained to the Division of Homeland Safety over reviews that state-licensed hashish corporations had had drivers stopped and product seized, ABC Information reported.
It got here to mild earlier this month that the Border Patrol had seized “a whole bunch of hundreds of {dollars}” value of legally produced hashish from registered corporations.
“Secretary (Alejandro) Mayorkas assured the governor that federal insurance policies with respect to legalized hashish haven’t modified,” Lujan Grisham spokesperson Michael Coleman wrote in an e-mail to ABC Information. “Regardless, the governor and her administration are engaged on a technique to guard New Mexico’s hashish trade.”
A small group of licensed New Mexico marijuana corporations additionally despatched their very own written plea to the state’s congressional delegation, asking for assist in brokering a take care of the Division of Homeland Safety, which oversees the Border Patrol, in order that authorized hashish corporations gained’t hold arbitrarily shedding their crops to federal seizures.
The seizures have been considerably curious on condition that there’s been no corresponding such actions in Arizona or California, each of which have regulated hashish markets and operations inside 100 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border, which is the gap by which Border Patrol visitors checkpoints are approved. These checkpoints in New Mexico are the place hashish corporations have had drivers stopped and product seized.
In accordance with the New Mexico Hashish Chamber of Commerce, the Border Patrol has stopped automobiles from at the least 12 totally different marijuana corporations at its checkpoints, and seized over $300,000 in authorized hashish, KRQE reported.
“Federal legislation does supersede state legislation. Sadly, as regulators, we don’t have a lot authority over this… once more we’re simply attempting to gather sufficient information to verify we get correct information to the governor and her group to make one of the best resolution doable,” Todd Stevens, director of the state Hashish Management Division, advised KRQE.
Matt Kennicott, the proprietor of hashish firm Excessive Upkeep, mentioned the scenario has left him and different authorized companies in limbo, questioning if their investments are in danger.
“It’s not a little bit complicated, it’s so much complicated,” he advised ABC Information. “We’re attempting to determine the place this directive got here from.”
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