Industry says kids’ safety not ‘black and white’ as lawmakers weigh new cannabis packaging

SANTA FE — As a lifelong cannabis user and family man, Pharmers Quality founder Don Romero says he always knew his kids might take an interest in the substance at the center of his business and off-duty downtime.

The solution, he said, was to treat cannabis just like he did the alcohol or guns he also kept in his house — keeping it out of reach of his children and talking to them with his wife about why the choice to use cannabis was one they could only make once they became adults.

Romero, many of his fellow industry entrepreneurs and the Cannabis Association of New Mexico are arguing in the current 30-day session that safe storage and education are the solutions to lower elevated underage cannabis poisoning rates in New Mexico, which is considering legislation this year to more strictly regulate cannabis products and packaging that bill sponsors say are too enticing for children.

House Bill 294, set to be heard by House lawmakers on Saturday, would require cannabis packaging to shift to a black-and-white color scheme, with artificial color additives for products or packaging requiring prior approval by the state’s Cannabis Control Division, a provision added by the House Commerce and Economic Development Committee.

“This is an adult product,” said Rep. Doreen Gallegos, D-Las Cruces, the bill’s primary sponsor. “When we’re packaging cannabis in packages that look like candy packages, I think that there’s a problem.”

But for Romero and others around the state who have contributed to what has bloomed into a multibillion-dollar industry in New Mexico in recent years, compelling colors and designs are as intrinsic to their marketing strategies as they are to any other commercial enterprise.

Moreover, they say HB 294 misses what they view as the primary culprit when it comes to regulatory loopholes in their industry: intoxicating hemp products, a separate category altogether that the legislation fails to address.

Matt Kennicott, executive director and co-founder of the Cannabis Association of New Mexico, is lobbying to protect the state’s cannabis industry from regulations he said would unfairly restrict dozens of manufacturers from standing out among competitors, including those from out of state.

“The Legislature at this point is trying to force the industry into black-and-white packaging, basically effectively neutering our brands and our brand identities,” Kennicott told the Journal.

The Cannabis Control Division currently requires cannabis packaging to be child-resistant and resealable, and to detail potency information. Packaging and the products they contain must also steer away from cartoons or mimicking the likenesses of well-known celebrities, fictional characters and popular noncannabis foods, like Snickers bars.

Despite those regulations, Gallegos and a bipartisan group of four other lawmakers are arguing Saturday that HB 294 is necessary to drive down stubbornly high numbers of cannabis-related poison center calls involving children.

Calls to the New Mexico Poison and Drug Information Center for cannabis exposures in children aged 5 and younger more than doubled between 2019 and 2023, with over half involving edible cannabis products, according to the agency’s 2024 report. From 2024 to 2025, those calls fell by around 23%, from 43 emergencies to 33.

Despite the decline, the agency also reported that it has received a total of 1,000 calls related to marijuana exposure since 2021, most involving kids 12 and under, who often required hospitalization related to hallucinations and anxiety. The agency’s reports did not distinguish between calls tied to marijuana or intoxicating hemp.

Cannabis use by kids, even in their teenage years, can produce “lasting brain developmental effects and a higher potential for cannabis use disorder,” according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The sponsors of HB 294 say the solution is more stringent regulation of cannabis. But those within the industry say enforcing existing laws, teaching parents how to more safely store cannabis products in the home and addressing less regulated hemp products should be the focus of regulatory efforts.

“The real issue is with the unregulated intoxicating hemp products,” Kennicott said. “Those aren’t tested. They’re not regulated. They can come in from out of state. Yes, there is a registration process they have to go through with the state, but there’s no authority to go to a retailer and say, ‘You’re doing this wrong. You have untested product.’”

Hemp, a form of the cannabis plant with broader industrial applications and less potential for psychoactive effects, is more loosely regulated on a federal level compared to marijuana.

That is set to change this November, however, when a congressional amendment enacted late last year goes into effect, banning a wide range of intoxicating hemp products that have circumvented more stringent marijuana laws.

Amanda Metzler, policy specialist at Higher Cultures, a cannabis brand that launched in Las Cruces in 2024, said lawmakers this year may be conflating cannabis products produced in the state with hemp products produced outside of the Land of Enchantment.

“We understand as an industry that this is an issue,” she said, “but for us right now, coming after the legal market and putting it in black-and-white packaging, when the Legislature isn’t even bringing up a bill to deal with the intoxicating hemp sold at gas stations, doesn’t make sense to us.”

Romero said the cost to businesses if HB 294 were to become law could be crushing for what remains a nascent industry in New Mexico.

“We estimated it would cost us close to $360,000 to throw away packaging,” he said, “and then we’d have to buy new packaging for all of those products.”

Gallegos, a one-time cannabis user and career social worker who voted to legalize recreational sales in 2021, said lawmakers have no plans at present to help foot the bill for the industry, which has generated just over $2 billion in combined medical and adult-use sales since April 2022, according to the Cannabis Control Division.

As part of their lobbying efforts against HB 294, the Cannabis Association of New Mexico has partnered with Pharmers Quality and eight other major cannabis brands to launch safecannabisnm.com, the home of a new safety campaign they hope will help keep cannabis products out of the wrong hands.

“Kids should not be consuming cannabis,” Kennicott said. “It’s really an adult product, and it should be regulated as such with input from the industry.”

Romero said that even with all of the right regulations in place, a process he supports, keeping kids safe from adult substances will always come down to safe storage and instruction in the home.

“We’ve never had an issue with it,” he said. “Even when my oldest was young, he knew dad used cannabis, so No. 1, it wasn’t cool. If you have teenagers, they will definitely try to be opposite you. 

“But just like anything else,” he added, “we established a certain respect for things that kids aren’t allowed to touch or partake in or consume. My wife and I pride ourselves on having good talks with our kids and education ... We’ve always had open conversations about alcohol, guns and cannabis in our house.”

John Miller is the Albuquerque Journal’s northern New Mexico correspondent. He can be reached at jmiller@abqjournal.com.