In less than six months, recreational marijuana will be legal in New Mexico. So what changes can New Mexicans expect in a new world of legal marijuana? Law enforcement officials in Colorado have a warning for New Mexico. Prosecutor George Brauchler was there in the beginning. “What has turned out to be unpredictably bad, is the surge in crime, one, violent crime,” said Brauchler. Brauchler was a newly elected district attorney when Colorado first legalized recreational marijuana. “At the time I thought ‘we’ll spend a lot of time on cocaine, methamphetamine, fentanyl, which was really starting to catch fire back in the early 2010s’,” said Brauchler. “That turned out to be crack smoke crazy because what I ended up having to do was take this senior prosecutor who runs this organized crime unit now, more than 50% of her time was dedicated to nothing but illegal marijuana grows.”
KRQE Staff, KRQE, 09/13/2021 09:18:00