MHA Nation decriminalizes medical marijuana

So she turned to a drug recently decriminalized on the Fort Berthold reservation, where she lives — a drug she had warned her kids about but was now embracing as a newfound hope: marijuana.

To Hoise, the tribe’s decriminalization of medical marijuana is a step in the right direction. But without actually legalizing the drug, cannabis dispensaries aren’t allowed to operate on the reservation, making access inconvenient for tribal residents.

Doctors diagnosed Hosie’s son, as a teenager, with ADHD and then, at age 20, with bipolar disorder. They treated him with a cocktail of prescription medications, including Adderall and the antipsychotic Seroquel, but his condition worsened, said Hosie, who asked that her son not be named to protect his privacy.

“That’s how his addiction started,” she said, “cause we started him on Adderall.”

Hosie said her son began abusing his prescription drugs, which put him in psychosis, a state where a person is disconnected from reality. At a treatment center in Indiana, he slept for 18 hours a day and barely ate. Seizures and tremors weakened his body.

“He was emotionless,” said Hosie.

Hosie worked with doctors to wean her son off the prescription drugs and started looking for different treatment options on the Pine Ridge Reservation, where recreational marijuana is allowed. Recalling her daughter’s use of medical marijuana to treat anxiety, Hosie went to the dispensary to buy weed.

To weed or not to weed

A member of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation, Hosie is among a group of tribal members urging their council to legalize medical marijuana use for the treatment of chronic illnesses.

The tribe has yet to open the door for marijuana sales, but on July 1, it passed an ordinance that allows possession of medical marijuana for those with a valid prescription. Marijuana has been legal in North Dakota for medical use since 2016, but before the tribal ordinance, even if a tribal member had a state medical marijuana card, they could face a fine or jail time.

“If we’re really going to help people and make them better,” said Hosie, “then we have to explore all these alternatives.”

Currently, cannabis is illegal under federal law. It’s listed as a Schedule I controlled substance, meaning it has “no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse,” according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

According to the Mayo Clinic, doctors need to conduct more research to conclude that marijuana is safe, citing side effects that include increased heart rate, panic attacks and memory problems.

Despite federal regulations, some doctors treat patients with cannabis if they practice in one of the 59 tribes or 39 states where it’s legal.

Dr. Joseph Rosado is one such doctor. As a medical cannabis specialist and author of “Hope & Healing: The Case for Cannabis,” he spoke to MHA Nation members at the alterNATIVE Medicine Symposium, in New Town, North Dakota, on July 29 and 30 about cannabis’s potential to alleviate a host of chronic medical conditions. The event was hosted by the Green Road Initiative, a MHA member-based organization, and MHA councilman Robert White.

Cannabinoids, the chemical compounds in cannabis, reduce inflammation and fight oxidative stress, risk factors of cancer and heart disease, which are two leading causes of death on the Fort Berthold Reservation, explained Rosado.

The most well known cannabinoids, CBD and THC, are particularly good at these jobs. However, the second of the two gets a bad rap because it also leads to psychoactive effects. In other words, it makes you high.

That and its potential for addiction make medical marijuana so controversial.

But seeing cannabis improve his patients’ lives is evidence enough for Rosado.

He provided a medical consultation for MHA tribal member Darian Morsette last year before he passed away. Leslie Morsette, Darian’s sister, said prescription drugs did little to lessen the pain Darian felt while in hospice.

“We didn’t know what to do. None of the medicines were working,” she said. So they connected with Rosado, who found the right dose of cannabis to manage her brother’s pain.

“The quality of life he was able to have,” said Rosado, “and the memories his family will be able to have, is priceless.”

Beloved Woman of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (EBCI), Myrtle Drive Johnson, went through a similar experience two years ago while fighting colon and lung cancer.

After colon cancer surgery, Johnson prayed to the Creator to take away her pain. Doctors prescribed oxycodone, an opioid, and it helped — but not enough. She said she started to abuse the prescription drug, taking a pill every two hours despite her doctor’s recommendation to wait at least six hours between doses.

“I was scared to death I was going to get addicted,” said Johnson, which is when her niece and caretaker “threw a bag of weed in my lap.”

Five days later, Johnson tossed the opioids and hasn’t taken pain medication since.

“I truly believe, now that I’ve experienced what marijuana can do, that God put marijuana on this Earth to help us,” she said.

Returning to Native roots

Johnson remembers her father, a healer, using marijuana to overcome his alcohol addiction. Native healers commonly used marijuana to treat pain, but after it became illegal in the U.S. in 1970 under the Controlled Substances Act, its presence in Native healing faded.

Legalizing marijuana for medicinal use, Johnson said, is returning to Native roots.

Spurred on by this principle and tribal members’ support, the EBCI legalized medical marijuana in 2021 and then opened a dispensary, even though it’s illegal in North Carolina. On April 20, 2024, Johnson made the first legal cannabis purchase on her reservation.

Three years later, EBCI opened the Great Smoky Cannabis Company, the world’s largest dispensary.

Lee Griffin, the human resource director at the dispensary’s parent company, Qualla Enterprise LLC, called the tribe’s move to legalize marijuana “exercising our sovereignty in action.”

As the EBCI demonstrated in North Carolina, tribes are in a unique position to make their own marijuana laws. In North Dakota, the state has no criminal jurisdiction over tribal members on the reservation without tribal consent under Public Law 280.

This means that North Dakota tribes can legalize medical or recreational marijuana regardless of state marijuana laws.

By taking advantage of tribal sovereignty, a cannabis program can boost a tribe’s economic development and create job opportunities, Griffin explained at the symposium.

The Great Smoky Cannabis Company generated a 10% return on investment in its first year and employs 250 people, 222 of whom are enrolled members. During its year of operations, 126,500 people visited the dispensary, bringing more tourism revenue to Cherokee.

To build on the success, the EBCI tribal council set aside land to open another dispensary — basically a copy of the first, according to Griffin — which will potentially double the company’s employment and profits.

EBCI Councilman Bo Crowe pushed for the expansion, but said in 2016 when the council started talking about legalizing medical marijuana, he opposed the idea.

“I fought against it every day. Every time it would come up in the council, I was the first one to make a move to kill it,” he said. “But it was my fault. I didn’t educate myself early enough to be able to know the benefits it was going to have for my people.”

Crowe said that despite his early misgivings, the cannabis profits helped change his mind. Cannabis is just another business, he said, which tribes are particularly equipped to run because of their gaming experience — regulating gambling activities, handling cash and hiring employees.

The systems are in place for tribes to succeed and make a profit should they take up a cannabis program, said Crowe, but the tribal benefits go beyond money.

“Once [cannabis] comes into your tribe,” he said, “you start looking at the lives it’s saved.”

Griffin and Johnson shared their testimonials at the alterNATIVE symposium, encouraging more tribes to start cannabis programs of their own. This year, 12 tribes have done so, adding to the 47 already operating in 2024.

Tribes in North Dakota have yet to follow the trend, but with pressure from their constituents and competitive pressures from six tribally owned dispensaries in Minnesota and three in South Dakota, will the MHA Nation soon throw their hat in the ring and join the cannabis business?

A way forward with weed

After 10 years of watching her son struggle with mental illness and addiction, in July, Hosie lit up a joint and handed it to her son.

Mainly, the weed helped stimulate his appetite, but Hosie noticed it also reduced her son’s tremors, helped him sleep without the use of prescription medicine and curbed his addiction. After three weeks of treatment with marijuana and half the standard daily dose of Seraquel, Hosie’s son began to recover.

His periods of lucidity grew more frequent, and Hosie saw glimmers of the boy who wasn’t ashamed to hold his mom’s hand in public and always helped carry groceries for his elders.

Recognition and relief in his eyes, Hosie’s son turned to look at his mom and sighed. “Man,” he said. “I didn’t think I was ever going to come back from that.”