SANTA FE, N.M.  The only person in America with a state license to distribute marijuana wants to keep her identity secret.

“I’m so totally paranoid I can’t stand myself,” said the distributor, who runs a nonprofit group here that grows and sells marijuana for medicinal purposes and who insisted on meeting in the privacy of a hotel room.

It was not meant to be this way.

New Mexico’s new medical marijuana law was intended to provide safe, aboveboard access to the drug for hundreds of residents with chronic pain and other debilitating conditions. By licensing nonprofit distributors, New Mexico hoped to improve upon the free-for-all distribution systems in some states like California and Colorado, where hundreds of for-profit dispensaries have sprung up with virtually no state oversight.

But even in New Mexico, the process  from procuring the starter seed (in Amsterdam, via a middleman) to home delivery (by a former Marine)  is not for the faint of heart. Those engaged in the experiment here never know if they will be arrested, because growing, selling and using marijuana remain illegal under federal law. And robbery is always a fear.