Democratic state lawmakers say the time is ripe for New Mexico to legalize and tax marijuana sales for recreational use as the state grapples with a budget deficit and plunging revenues.

Democratic Sen. Gerald Ortiz y Pino of Albuquerque on Wednesday announced details of a forthcoming bill to legalize marijuana and tax sales by at least 15 percent to help shore up shaky state finances and reinvigorate the economy.

Local governments would choose whether to allow marijuana sales and could collect a 5 percent tax. Former district attorney and Republican New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez has consistently opposed legalizing marijuana or industrial hemp production.

Legislators in more than a dozen states have introduced measures to loosen laws restricting access to or criminalizing marijuana, a rush of legislative activity that supporters hope reflects a newfound willingness by public officials to embrace a trend toward legalization.

The gamut covered by measures introduced in the early days of legislative sessions underscores the patchwork approach to marijuana by states across the country — and the possibility that the different ways states treat marijuana could come to a head at the federal Justice Department, where President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to become attorney general is a staunch opponent of legal pot.

Growing up in Ohio, I experienced a series of very traumatic events as a child which have impacted me throughout my life. And again, as a young adult living in South Carolina, working as a EMT and doing beach patrol. I realize now that I attempted to handle my PTSD symptoms in many ways, some healthy and some unhealthy, but still suffered through many bad decisions, lost jobs, more bad experiences, and failed relationships because of my C-PTSD symptoms.

Somebody's got to be the first state to free the weed through the legislature.

Four states, including California, the nation’s most populous, voted to legalize marijuana on November 8. That doubles the number of legal states to eight, and more than quadruples the number of people living in legal marijuana states, bringing the number to something around 64 million.

Every one of those states legalized marijuana through the initiative process, but we’re not going to see anymore initiatives on state ballots until 2018, and perhaps 2020. That means that if we are to make more progress on spreading marijuana legalization in the next couple of years, it’s going to have to come at the state house instead of the ballot box.

Duke Rodriguez brought a three-week-old pot plant to the State Fair, touching off a silly kerfuffle that highlights the absurdity of our current marijuana laws.

Rodriguez is president and CEO of Ultra Health LLC, based in Scottsdale, Ariz. The plant he displayed to fairgoers is just one of 450 Ultra Health is permitted to grow on its 11-acre pot ranch in Bernalillo.

For publicly exhibiting a marijuana plant, the state demands Ultra Health suspend sales for five days, a penalty Rodriguez says will cost him $100,000.

There’s serious money in the legal marijuana trade, and a lot more still on the horizon.

A state advisory board that makes recommendations to the Health Department on New Mexico’s rapidly expanding Medical Cannabis Program voted 5-1 Friday in favor of adding “opiate use disorder” to the list of conditions that qualify, a move one health professional said could transform the state’s landscape of addiction.

If state Health Secretary-designate Lynn Gallagher adopts the new recommendations — she has the final word — thousands more New Mexicans will become eligible for the already exploding medical marijuana program. Officials say it has grown over the past year by 76 percent, to nearly 33,000 patients from 18,600.

The majority of the voters in New Mexico would like to see marijuana legalized for recreational purposes, according to a new poll conducted by the Albuquerque Journal.

The survey, which was published this past Sunday, finds that 61 percent of the voting public would support a measure aimed at establishing a taxed and regulated cannabis trade – similar to what is currently underway in Colorado. Only 34 percent of the respondents said they would oppose such a proposal. Others were undecided when asked their position.