New Mexico cannabis regulators request more funding to ramp up enforcement

The umbrella agency that houses New Mexico’s Cannabis Control Division has formally requested a more than a half-million-dollar budget increase for the coming fiscal year to ramp up enforcement in the marijuana trade, which is reportedly rife with rulebreakers.

The state Regulation and Licensing Department, of which the CCD is part, asked the state legislature for $61.6 million in funding for the 2026 fiscal year. The division wants to use at least part of the money to hire more investigators and staff for CCD, KRQE reported. The request is an increase of $562,000 from the 2025 fiscal year. The agency also said it needs more law enforcement authority granted by the legislature, KRQE reported.

“The Cannabis Control Division needs more resources to better serve its licensees and curb the illicit market,” an agency spokesman said in a press release. “Only with the legislature’s support can the CCD expand its compliance staff and create law enforcement positions that will provide us the authority to take action against unlicensed criminal activity.”

“We remain committed to ensuring businesses and professionals are operating safely and legally, and meeting the standards set by their industries,” the spokesman said.

The funding request breakdown includes $1.9 million for 10 new CCD compliance officers, $560,000 for vehicles for those 10 officers, and another $745,000 for equipment with which to seize and destroy illicit cannabis.

If the legislature also grants the CCD more legal authority for crackdowns, the funding request would also then include another $1.1 million for seven new special agents to tackle criminal activity in the cannabis industry and $465,000 for vehicles for those seven agents.

An investigation by KRQE earlier this year found that currently the CCD has only inspected about half of the roughly 3,000 permitted marijuana facilities scattered across the state, and the agency is severely understaffed.