Although the federal government is allowing tribes to grow marijuana on their reservations, it is unlikely to be as lucrative for them as gaming says a recent report in the Guardian.
Last December the U.S. Department of Justice issued guidelines for legalization of the weed on the reservation. The process is virtually identical to the process that states can take to legalize.
However, marijuana growing and use remains a federal offense. The “War on Drugs” remains active, despite signs by President Obama and some members of Congress that they would like to end it.
So far several tribes have announced that they plan to grow pot. In South Dakota, which bans the plants, the Flandreau Santee Sioux plan what they are calling the nation’s first “marijuana resort.”
In Wisconsin the Menominee and Ho-Chunk Nations are considering making it legal on the reservation, which, being sovereign, they can do.
The continued “war on drugs,” combined with the legalization of it in some quarters has created something of a national cognitive dissonance. Tribes that have rushed into the pot business have left themselves open to action by local, state and federal police.
In July agents from the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Federal Drug Enforcement Agency and state and local police raided two marijuana farms on the Pit River Tribe and Alturas Indian Rancheria in Northeastern California, in such force that it reminded some tribal members of the U.S. Cavalry attacking.
The agents seized over 12,000 plans and 100 pounds of processed pot but didn’t file any charges. Although tribes are “sovereign” that word means different things in different states and to different people. Some tribes operate under federal law that makes them subject to state criminal codes. What that means is that if pot is illegal in the state it may be illegal on the reservation, despite the Justice Department advisory.
This was followed by another raid a few months later of the Pinolville Pomo Nation near Alturas, California.
Even if growing is legal on the reservation, moving the crop once its harvested may be problematic if the involve using state roads. At the same time the Bureau of Reclamation has said that it will not deliver water to pot farms.
Moreover, revenue from the federal government, which often is a tribe’s principal source of income—especially if it is not a gaming tribe—may be threatened if a tribe begins pot cultivation.
In order to legally grow pot, tribes will be required to sign compacts with states, much as they do gaming compacts. However, the financial benefits won’t be nearly as lucrative. Tribes will likely be required to collect state taxes and enforce state regulations. This will make it impossible to offer tax-free marijuana smoking on the reservation.
Such compacts will look less like agreements between sovereigns and more like the tribes are subject to the states, something that most tribes find anathema.
