City Council approved marijuana equity tax appropriations. Here’s how the money will be used.

The Albuquerque City Council this week narrowly approved funding for a program that will provide a monthly income to dozens of low-income families and be used for preventing and treating addiction.

The council on Monday appropriated $4,020,000 to the Marijuana Equity and Community Reinvestment Fund, which is funded with tax revenue generated from recreational cannabis sales.

Some $2 million will go to the Tim Keller administration’s guaranteed income program and will send $750 a month to 100 low-income families over three years. The program is expected to begin in the fall.

The other $2 million goes toward substance use prevention, treatment and recovery programs run by the administration’s Health, Housing and Homelessness Department.

While the council is technically nonpartisan, the five councilors who lean Democratic — and make up its slim majority — voted in favor of the measure. The four votes against came from councilors with conservative voting records.

“For me, this is extremely exciting to have worked on it before, and to be here to vote on it today,” Councilor Nichole Rogers said at Monday’s meeting.

Those eligible for the guaranteed income program must live in the International District or West Side, and have a child enrolled in third grade at Whittier or Carlos Rey elementary schools — some of the schools with the lowest academic outcomes and highest rates of chronic absenteeism.

When it comes to fighting addiction, the Health, Housing and Homelessness Department is hoping to use the funding to partner with six programs from five organizations.

The policy was crafted by the Keller administration and sponsored by Councilor Klarissa Peña.

In October 2023, Peña herself sponsored an ordinance that passed to utilize the findings of the city’s Cannabis Equity Working Group — formed in 2021 — to determine how to use the tax revenue.

“This is an opportunity to create some movement, especially for communities that have been historically marginalized by the prohibition of cannabis and the war on drugs, specifically Black and brown folks,” Ben Lewinger, executive director of the New Mexico Cannabis Chamber of Commerce, told the Journal in an interview.

He added that the suggestions for where the money should be allocated came from a “forward-thinking” working group over the course of a couple of years.

“Municipalities and counties have virtually complete control over, and hopefully the state follows suit and starts spending some of their cut of the money soon,” Lewinger said.

New Mexico passed legislation to legalize recreational cannabis use in 2021 and consumption of it became legal in April 2022. Recreational cannabis sales to date have surpassed $1 billion statewide.