Plastic mulch advice

Not a new gardener by any means but new to gardening in the US, so sort of a beginner.
Being British by birth, where you could stick a walking stick in the ground and it would grow, coming to New Mexico was a real eye opener. Such a shock to the system that you would need to actually water your garden. Anyway, every year I've had the same problems, weeds and gophers. I've become adept at trapping gophers so they aren't much of a problem anymore, but the weeds, that's a different matter, and these are tenacious weeds with very, very deep roots. Very reluctantly tried chemicals, but the weeds seemed to thrive on it.
This year I've decided to try plastic mulch with drip tape for the first time in an attempt to combat the weeds and cope with our 20 year drought. Can anyone who has used plastic mulch in a hot and arid climate give any hints and tips, upsides, downsides etc?

If you are trying to grow some fruit and nut trees, I would recommend that you let the encourage the weeds and not get any plastic mulch. Just chop and drop once a month, those weeds and actually doing a great job for your "food forest" in fact try and grow more weed/cover crop. Weeds add carbon to your soil, thus powerup the soil food web, they also bring up minerals, ahelp to decompact your soil, they also help with pest management so that you don't have spray your vegatables, and in the case of weeds in the legumes they also fix nitrogen for your garden.

Due to the fact that you said gardening, I am going to assume that you are not trying to grow a food forest, but instead just a regular "vegetables" garden from the usual families of cabbage/kale, spinach/beet, onion/garlic, mint/thyme, potatoes/tomatoes, squash/melon, carrot/dill, beans/peas, etc. In which case, I completely agree that weeds are a buzz kill. To me the solution is to over seed, so that there is minimal space for the weeds to grow and then harvest the vegetables as micro-greens, leaving behind only the strongest so that it can grow to maturity. I also recommend that you let 10% of your vegetables go to seed, so that your soil is filled with vegetable seeds vs with weed seeds.

If the weeds are mainly in your walkway and not in your planting area you can also try using stone mulch.

Overall I am not a big fan of putting even more plastic in the soil, if it can be helped. I do support your drip irrigation plans.

Can you share your full plans for your garden. That might help you get some ideas form other folks.