Apparently someone didn’t get – or fully understand – the memo.
Agents with the Drug Enforcement Administration and the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs raided a pair of California marijuana grows Wednesday on sovereign tribal lands, according to KOLO TV.
The raids on the Alturas Indian Rancheria and the XL Ranch in the northeastern corner of the state come after the Justice Department’s much-publicized memo released in December spelling out that Native Americans can grow and sell marijuana on tribal lands.
According to the search warrant for the two locations, however, federal agents had reason to believe that the cultivation sites were designed to produce thousands of marijuana plants to be transported off the tribal lands and sold in undisclosed locations. That apparently would violate federal guidelines for Native American tribes that want to grow and sell cannabis.
The warrant also described internal tribal disagreements over whether or not to pursue a cannabis business arrangement, which also led to the raids.
At least 12,000 marijuana plants were seized by agents during the raids, along with more than 100 pounds of processed cannabis. No criminal charges have been issued so far.
The emergence of more overseas cannabis markets offers companies billions of dollars in business opportunities.
Perhaps some native tribes didn’t carefully read the memo
All financed by Canandian Tobacco CEO
Several Northern California news blogs ran photos of the raid today. Clearly the operation was set up to divert weed to the black market. The greenhouses already built and under cnstruction would have had an approximate capacity of 60,000 plants. Altural is in extreme northeast California, sparsely populated and not a place that attracts a lot of visitors. No way all that pot could be consumed on the two remote. rancherias. One of the rancherias was reported to only have 5 members. Swing and a miss!
I am a little confused. I thought tribal land was sovereign much like foreign embassy land? How does the Federal government have jurisdiction over a sovereign nation’s land?
That is not how tribal land is arranged nor has it ever been arranged like that. It is definitely under federal law as much as any other state.
“How does the Federal government have jurisdiction over a sovereign nation’s land?”
With guns, violence, murder, and coruption.
Question:
Does anyone believe that California Cannabis seized is actually destroyed?
What a great business plan. Let others grow and cure your cannabis.