Minnesota\u2019s new adult-use cannabis law took effect on August 1. Those 21 and older can now hold up to two ounces of cannabis in public, consume it in any private place and possess two pounds or cultivate up to eight plants (four mature) at home.<\/p>\n
House File 100<\/a>, signed into law by Gov. Tim Walz (D) on May 30, makes Minnesota the 23rd US state to legalize cannabis. It also mandates a framework for a regulated retail market,\u00a0building on that established<\/a>\u00a0for the state medical marijuana program in place since 2014. Medical dispensaries and\u00a0other prospective adult-use operators<\/a>\u00a0are\u00a0now waiting<\/a>\u00a0on the licensing and regulatory system to be put in place. The newly formed state Office of Cannabis Management says legal retail sales are unlikely to begin before early 2025.<\/p>\n But the first sales nonetheless took place on the very morning that HF 100 took effect\u2014at\u00a0Red Lake Nation<\/a>, a Native American reservation in the state\u2019s remote northwest.<\/p>\n Journalists and tribal leaders were both on hand as a line of more than 100 eager locals queued up outside Red Lake\u2019s NativeCare dispensary for the first sales. The Twin Cities\u2019\u00a0Star Tribune<\/em><\/a>\u00a0described \u201cdancing and cheering\u201d as the doors opened.\u00a0 Meanwhile, the\u00a0Minnesota Reformer<\/em><\/a>\u00a0ran a photo of Mikah Whitecloud, NativeCare\u2019s marketing manager, handing out \u201cmarijuana menus\u201d to smiling customers.\u00a0<\/p>\n According to the Reformer<\/em>, NativeCare charges $50 for 3.5 grams of standard strains, like \u201cPineapple Chunk\u201d and \u201cGlue,\u201d and $60 for premium strains, such as \u201cHella Jelly\u201d and \u201cSuper F\u2019n Gassy.\u201d Customers must pay in cash and may purchase up to two ounces at a time. The product is grown on reservation, in an operation under the auspices of the tribal government.\u00a0<\/p>\n NativeCare opened as a medical dispensary in February. On July 11, the Red Lake tribal council voted to legalize the sale of adult-use cannabis on the reservation. Tribal Secretary Sam Strong told\u00a0Minnesota Public Radio<\/a>\u00a0that the move creates \u201can investment opportunity for the tribe to provide tested product to individuals that want to purchase it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n He also posed it as the opportunity to create a regulated market for a psychoactive substance at a time when\u2014alarmingly\u2014fentanyl is more readily available on the reservation than cannabis.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cFentanyl has been taking a deadly toll in our community,\u201d Strong said. \u201cWe want to make sure that we\u2019re protecting those that choose to participate.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The tribal council at the\u00a0White Earth Nation<\/a>, also at the northwest end of the state, voted to similarly allow adult-use sales on July 28. The state\u2019s second dispensary is likely to open there within a matter of days, likewise with product from a grow operation overseen by the tribal government. \u201cIn the near future, White Earth Nation will open for adult-use, recreational cannabis,\u201d White Earth Chairman Michael Fairbanks told\u00a0MPR News<\/a>\u00a0after the tribal council vote.\u00a0<\/p>\n As in Red Lake, the new dispensary will be open to the public as well as tribal members. \u201cIt\u2019s good not just for our constituents, but it\u2019s good for all Minnesotans,\u201d Fairbanks said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Fairbanks also confirmed that White Earth, along with other indigenous nations in Minnesota, is in talks to establish a compact with the state that would allow tribes to operate dispensaries off-reservation.\u00a0<\/p>\n HF 100 calls for compacts between the governor and Minnesota\u2019s 11 tribal governments, allowing for the sale of either medical or adult-use cannabis. However, the law explicitly recognizes that tribal governments<\/a> are sovereign and can operate dispensaries on their own jurisdictional territories regardless of whether such compacts are in place.\u00a0<\/p>\n In addition to its own 1,200-plus square-mile reservation, Red Lake Nation also has jurisdictional control over a large area of the Northwest Angle, Minnesota\u2019s exclave above the 49th parallel that forms the Canadian border, abutting the provinces of Ontario and Manitoba.\u00a0<\/p>\n Both Red Lake and White Earth are nations of the Anishinaabeg people\u2014also known as Ojibwe or, by the English interpretation, Chippewa.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n White Earth is the home of the renowned Native American activist Winona LaDuke, who has for several years been\u00a0growing hemp<\/a>\u00a0on the reservation. She helped establish the\u00a0Anishinaabe Agricultural Institute<\/a>\u00a0to promote hemp, and it is now being grown both on her own homestead and adjacent reservation lands owned by the\u00a0White Earth Land Recovery Project<\/a>. She also helped found the Land Recovery Project in 1989 to buy back usurped reservation lands.\u00a0<\/p>\n Both reservations have been involved in the fight<\/a> against the Line 3 oil pipeline that the Canadian company Enbridge hopes to build through Minnesota\u2014part of a network of pipelines bringing Canadian tar-sands oil to US markets.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n And LaDuke makes the connection between a revitalized agricultural economy for the country\u2019s marginal rural areas and the ecological imperative to find an alternative to the current unsustainable global model.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cBecause the word canvas comes from cannabis, and that\u2019s what we should be making sails and tarps out of, not plastics and petroleum byproducts,\u201d she wrote in a commentary last month for North Dakota\u2019s\u00a0InForum<\/a>\u00a0website. \u201cThat\u2019s how we keep carbon in the soil and not in the air.\u201d<\/p>\n The post Native Nations Get the Jump on Minnesota Adult-Use Cannabis<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Minnesota\u2019s new adult-use cannabis law took effect on August 1. Those 21 and older can now hold up to two ounces of cannabis in public, consume it in any private place and possess two pounds or cultivate up to eight plants (four mature) at home. House File 100, signed intoContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":190,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[363,159,16903,50,1588,90,65,17319,3569,3466,17354,17355,17356,17357],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67507"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/190"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67507"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67507\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67508,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67507\/revisions\/67508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Sovereignty for Cannabis<\/h4>\n
Cannabis, Land Recovery and Ecology\u00a0<\/h4>\n
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\nRead More: Native Nations Get the Jump on Minnesota Adult-Use Cannabis<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"