Business
Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians Sends Medical Pot Regulations to N.C. Assembly
The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians is moving forward with its plans to establish regulations to help govern medical cannabis on tribal property.
According to the Citizen Times, the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (EBCI) Council met on Jan. 12 and successfully voted to introduce the tribe’s medical cannabis regulations to the North Carolina General Assembly. The resolution states that this is done with the intention “to further the agenda effectively and efficiently coordinating in the administration of medical cannabis laws across the jurisdictions of the state of North Carolina and Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians.”
EBCI Chief Richard Sneed addressed the Tribal Council at the meeting, which consists of 12 members, about the necessity of keeping in communication with lawmakers in North Carolina. “All this is, is it as a matter of tribal law, before anybody does any work engaging with the state or federal legislature, we have to have permission of the governing legislative body to do so,” Sneed said.
“Any tribal council member—chief or vice chief—who engages in Raleigh or in D.C., we need essentially marching orders to do so. As this next legislative session in Raleigh gets started and we’re down there doing lobbying work, this just grants permission for us to talk to them about medical cannabis, and the subsequent North Carolina law that will probably be on the floor during the next general assembly.”
In August 2021, the EBCI Council voted 8 to 4 to legalize medical cannabis. Over one year later in November 2022, the EBCI announced that they harvested their first medical cannabis crop, and also began accepting job applications for the tribe’s medical cannabis dispensary, which is being operated by Qualla Enterprises LLC and is set to open sometime in 2023.
The EBCI Council voted in December 2022 to give Qualla Enterprises $63 million. According to Qualla Enterprises General Manager Forrest Parker, the tribe will be able to properly regulate its business. “It gives us a lot of confidence that we’re surrounded by people that have done this so many times, that have the experience, that have the understanding,” said Parker. “This tribe, I’m so proud of us for putting us in a position to learn from other people’s mistakes so that when we do this right, that number is precise. It’s not $150 million because we’re trying to cover all these things that we don’t know. We actually feel like we actually know.”
The EBCI is also funding its own Cannabis Control Board to manage the business, including licensing, audits, annual reports, and more. One control board member, David Wijewickrama, who is also an attorney, shed some light on what to expect in 2023. “There are a lot of moving parts to this project that we’re learning every day,” Wijewickrama said. “The tribe’s given us a lot of resources to ensure this process succeeds.”
As for nearby states with cannabis, only Alabama and Virginia offer medical cannabis programs. Once the EBCI dispensary opens, it will only allow patients who have a tribe medical cannabis card to purchase cannabis. Those patients must also be approved as suffering from acquired immune deficiency syndrome (such as AIDS, anxiety disorders, cancer, or glaucoma), a medical condition that causes wasting syndrome, muscle spasms (such as those caused by multiple sclerosis), and chronic pain, as well as neuropathic conditions or post-traumatic stress disorder.
Cardholders will be allowed to purchase one ounce (or about 2,500 milligrams of THC) or less per day, and no more than six ounces (or 10,000 milligrams of THC) per month. This particular limitation will be enacted until at least August 2024. After that time, the board can review and change the rules.
The EBCI is just one of many tribes looking to take part in the medical and/or adult-use cannabis industry. In New York, the Oneida Indian Nation announced last year that it was seeking to launch a seed-to-sale cannabis business in 2023, while the Saint Regis (Akwesasne) Mohawk Tribe partnered with actor Jim Belushi to open a dispensary in October 2022. This is followed by the Seneca Nation of Indians, which seeks to open a dispensary in Niagara Falls in February 2023.
Across the country in San Diego, the Iipay Nation of Santa Ysabel currently operates its own dispensary, called Mountain Source Santa Ysabel. The Las Vegas Paiute Tribe owns a dispensary called NuWu Cannabis Marketplace.
The Lower Sioux Indian Community recently announced that it will build a hemp processing facility with the goal of creating a hempcrete test home. “There are 20,000 uses for the plant. I can’t think of a better one for our community members than to give them a home that will last forever,” said Lower Sioux Tribal Council Vice President, Earl Pendleton.
New Mexico regulators fined a cannabis operator nearly $300,000 and revoked its license after the company allegedly created fake reports in the state’s traceability software.
The New Mexico Cannabis Control Division (CCD) accused marijuana manufacturer and retailer Golden Roots of 11 violations, according to Albuquerque Business First.
Golden Roots operates the The Cannabis Revolution Dispensary.
The majority of the violations are related to the Albuquerque company’s improper use of BioTrack, which has been New Mexico’s track-and-trace vendor since 2015.
The CCD alleges Golden Roots reported marijuana production only two months after it had received its vertically integrated license, according to Albuquerque Business First.
Because cannabis takes longer than two months to be cultivated, the CCD was suspicious of the report.
After inspecting the company’s premises, the CCD alleged Golden Roots reported cultivation, transportation and sales in BioTrack but wasn’t able to provide officers who inspected the site evidence that the operator was cultivating cannabis.
In April, the CCD revoked Golden Roots’ license and issued a $10,000 fine, according to the news outlet.
The company requested a hearing, which the regulator scheduled for Sept. 1.
At the hearing, the CCD testified that the company’s dried-cannabis weights in BioTrack were suspicious because they didn’t seem to accurately reflect how much weight marijuana loses as it dries.
Company employees also poorly accounted for why they were making adjustments in the system of up to 24 pounds of cannabis, making comments such as “bad” or “mistake” in the software, Albuquerque Business First reported.
Golden Roots was fined $298,972.05 – the amount regulators allege the company made selling products that weren’t properly accounted for in BioTrack.
The CCD has been cracking down on cannabis operators accused of selling products procured from out-of-state or not grown legally:
- Regulators alleged in August that Albuquerque dispensary Sawmill Sweet Leaf sold out-of-state products and didn’t have a license for extraction.
- Paradise Exotics Distro lost its license in July after regulators alleged the company sold products made in California.
Golden Roots was the first alleged rulebreaker in New Mexico to be asked to pay a large fine.
Source: https://mjbizdaily.com/new-mexico-cannabis-operator-fined-loses-license-for-alleged-biotrack-fraud/
Four marijuana companies, including a multistate operator, have filed a lawsuit against U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland in which they allege the federal MJ prohibition under the Controlled Substances Act is no longer constitutional.
According to the complaint, filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts, retailer Canna Provisions, Treevit delivery service CEO Gyasi Sellers, cultivator Wiseacre Farm and MSO Verano Holdings Corp. are all harmed by “the federal government’s unconstitutional ban on cultivating, manufacturing, distributing, or possessing intrastate marijuana.”
Verano is headquartered in Chicago but has operations in Massachusetts; the other three operators are based in Massachusetts.
The lawsuit seeks a ruling that the “Controlled Substances Act is unconstitutional as applied to the intrastate cultivation, manufacture, possession, and distribution of marijuana pursuant to state law.”
The companies want the case to go before the U.S. Supreme Court.
They hired prominent law firm Boies Schiller Flexner to represent them.
The New York-based firm’s principal is David Boies, whose former clients include Microsoft, former presidential candidate Al Gore and Elizabeth Holmes’ disgraced startup Theranos.
Similar challenges to the federal Controlled Substances Act (CSA) have failed.
One such challenge led to a landmark Supreme Court decision in 2005.
In Gonzalez vs. Raich, the highest court in the United States ruled in a 6-3 decision that the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution gave Congress the power to outlaw marijuana federally, even though state laws allow the cultivation and sale of cannabis.
In the 18 years since that ruling, 23 states and the District of Columbia have legalized adult-use marijuana and the federal government has allowed a multibillion-dollar cannabis industry to thrive.
Since both Congress and the U.S. Department of Justice, currently headed by Garland, have declined to intervene in state-licensed marijuana markets, the key facts that led to the Supreme Court’s 2005 ruling “no longer apply,” Boies said in a statement Thursday.
“The Supreme Court has since made clear that the federal government lacks the authority to regulate purely intrastate commerce,” Boies said.
“Moreover, the facts on which those precedents are based are no longer true.”
Verano President Darren Weiss said in a statement the company is “prepared to bring this case all the way to the Supreme Court in order to align federal law with how Congress has acted for years.”
While the Biden administration’s push to reschedule marijuana would help solve marijuana operators’ federal tax woes, neither rescheduling nor modest Congressional reforms such as the SAFER Banking Act “solve the fundamental issue,” Weiss added.
“The application of the CSA to lawful state-run cannabis business is an unconstitutional overreach on state sovereignty that has led to decades of harm, failed businesses, lost jobs, and unsafe working conditions.”
Alabama regulators are targeting Dec. 1 to award the first batch of medical cannabis business licenses after the agency’s first two attempts were scrapped because of scoring errors and litigation.
The first licenses will be awarded to individual cultivators, delivery providers, processors, dispensaries and state testing labs, according to the Alabama Medical Cannabis Commission (AMCC).
Then, on Dec. 12, the AMCC will award licenses for vertically integrated operations, a designation set primarily for multistate operators.
Licenses are expected to be handed out 28 days after they have been awarded, so MMJ production could begin in early January, according to the Alabama Daily News.
That means MMJ products could be available for patients around early March, an AMCC spokesperson told the media outlet.
Regulators initially awarded 21 business licenses in June, only to void them after applicants alleged inconsistencies with how the applications were scored.
Then, in August, the state awarded 24 different licenses – 19 went to June recipients – only to reverse themselves again and scratch those licenses after spurned applicants filed lawsuits.
A state judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by Chicago-based MSO Verano Holdings Corp., but another lawsuit is pending.
Source: https://mjbizdaily.com/alabama-plans-to-award-medical-cannabis-licenses-dec-1/
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