Colorado Cannabis Firm to Grow on California Tribal Lands

Following the recent Department of Justice directive allowing marijuana to be cultivated and sold on tribal lands, a company from Denver called United Cannabis Corp. has teamed up with financial backers from the firm FoxBarry Cos. LLC. Their aim is to form agreements with several California Native American tribes to grow and manufacture cannabis products on native land and then sell those products to medical dispensaries.

Considering that California (and a handful of other states) are likely to put recreational legalization (or at the very least, decriminalization) measures on their ballots this year, I’m sure the United Cannabis Corp./FoxBarry Cos. LLC venture is also hoping to be poised to flood any vacancy they can in the legal retail market with their products.

United, who also develops marijuana strains, gained some small notoriety last year when they announced they were funding a Jamaica-based cannabis research facility, with aims of restoring and upholding the purity of Jamaican cannabis. It seems United is poised to step into the Jamaican cannabis market, if their recently proposed decriminalization initiative is successful. While Jamaica has long been associated with cannabis, growing and using cannabis is still illegal in the island nation.

The people behind this idea of growing marijuana on tribal lands claim that their business is not a direct result of the DOJ ruling, but they do acknowledge that the ruling stripped much of the risk out of the proposal, seeing as how they would have some measure of assurance that the feds won’t storm their facilities and shut them down.

I am curious about how Native Americans feel about this. Maybe they are happy to be a part of something that will help generate revenues for their tribes, and, obviously, United has received some assent from them or else we wouldn’t even be seeing this in the news.

However, in our modern culture, tribal lands are more often associated with gambling and illegal fireworks. While I don’t consider marijuana a vice, there are many that do. What I’m getting at here is that tribal lands are seen by some as the place you go in America to get the stuff that is illegal in most of America. Perhaps when cannabis goes legal nationwide, this will help deteriorate some of that stigma?

As long as all parties involved are treated well and fairly compensated, I’m looking forward to smoking some Native-grown grass.