“I’ve seen the statistics, I’ve talked to other state leaders,”
Following on from his fathers footsteps Jeff Apodaca is now running for governor of New Mexico and the medical cannabis is high on his agenda.
Jeff’s father Jerry was governor in 1978 when the first medical marijuana program was enacted in New Mexico. Little did he know that one of the first users would be his teenage son.
Jeff was well on his way to becoming a football star, playing on his high school team and ready to for New Mexico, things took a turn and life as he knew it stopped in senior year when he was diagnosed with sarcoma.The treatment and nausea from the chemotherapy was unbearable and he was unable to eat and lost 38 pounds.
The doctors had a conversation with his parents and said “you know Govenor, you signed this medical marijuana bill, he is 18, we can try it” After starting cannabis Jeff regained his appetite and after 18months of treatment he returned to college football for a successful season.
Jeff Apodaca is the only candidate running for governor on a platform which is aiming to expand the medical cannabis program. Apodaca has always carried his medical card and two years ago following a football injury went back to cannabis rather than opiates.
“A friend of mine’s daughter introduced me to CBD oils, I’ve been taking that for a year and a half now and I haven’t taken one pain pill,” he says, noting that New Mexico is home to communities which are some of the hardest hit by the opioid crisis.
As Apodaca sees it, with a governor supportive of cannabis at the helm, there is no reason his state can’t be a leader in the industry. New Mexico has some of the most advanced bio-research and agricultural universities in the country which, if the laws were set up to allow it, could be used to conduct much-needed cannabis research in the U.S. He’s also committed, he says, to ensuring that when the industry grows, it benefits New Mexicans looking to break in rather than out-of-state corporations with more capital.
Given the chance, Apodaca expects to have a legalization bill on his desk by next January and to have the program implemented by July of 2019. He is also adamant about following Colorado and California by making legalization a part of the state’s constitution “so that the next governor can’t come in and take it away.”
Source – Herb
Image – Jeff Apodaca
