Medical marijuana can now be purchased legally in North Carolina because the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians opens its long-planned dispensary on tribal land this weekend.
As the Asheville Citizen-Times reported, a whole lot of individuals, many with approved medical cards to buy items, celebrated the historic opening of the Great Smoky Cannabis Co. on Saturday within the Eastern Band area often called the Qualla Boundary. Saturday was April 20, also often called “420 Day,” or an annual day celebrating marijuana.
The ceremony marks the tribe’s latest liberalization of marijuana rules, which in 2021 decriminalized possession of small amounts of marijuana on its 89 square miles (231 square kilometers) of land within the Blue Ridge Mountains. The tribe also established a medical marijuana system, which included a tribe-founded business to grow and sell cannabis that provided financial rewards to tribal members and provided support for individuals with medical conditions.
“This project will change the course of their lives forever,” Forrest Parker, general manager of Qualla Enterprises, the tribal corporation that manages the dispensary, said in the course of the ribbon-cutting ceremony. “It will be a conduit for generations of social, economic and spiritual growth, the likes of which have never been experienced before.”
The Eastern Band, which has about 14,000 members, can adopt rules allowing cannabis as a sovereign nation and federally recognized tribe. Marijuana use stays illegal in the remaining of North Carolina. Still, Republican U.S. Senators Thom Tillis and Ted Budd have raised concerns with federal and state law enforcement about whether drug laws will proceed to be enforced in light of the pharmacy. In recent years, a statewide medical marijuana law has been discussed by the North Carolina General Assembly.
Adults 21 years of age or older with a tribal medical cannabis card or an out-of-state medical marijuana card may purchase items from Great Smoky Cannabis Co.
The size of marijuana sales could grow to be much larger. A majority of Eastern Band voters supported adult recreational use of marijuana on tribal lands in a referendum last September. The query also asked whether voters supported the tribal council in crafting laws to control such a market.
The Charlotte Observer, citing Councilman Boyd Owle, reported that an adult-use ordinance might be finalized in June.
“Let’s get it right before we put it out there. But we’re on the right track,” Owle said after a council work session on the ordinance earlier this month.
The pharmacy could generate gross sales of over $200 million in the primary 12 months if the product were limited to medical patients, in comparison with $385 million if the product was available to all adult users. This is in response to figures from Qualla Enterprises released ahead of last 12 months’s adult use referendum.
At Saturday’s ceremony, tribal translator Myrtle Driver Johnson purchased the primary medical marijuana in a transaction conducted in English and Cherokee. She said she named the several strains of cannabis and translated them into Cherokee.
