Lawyer: South Dakota Tribe Destroying Marijuana Crop

“The Flandreau Santee is the first tribe in South Dakota to legalize the drug following a 2014 decision by the U-S Justice Department to allow tribes to grow and use pot on tribal land”.

Jackley told the Associated Press that he was informed of the tribe’s decision Saturday.

Attorney General Marty Jackley was among a number of state officials who said the planned resort would violate state law.

An American Indian tribe slated to open the nation’s first marijuana resort is destroying its crop and temporarily suspending the project in South Dakota while leaders seek clarification from the federal government, according to the tribe’s attorney.

“We haven’t always agreed, but we’ve had good, positive discussions”, he said. The Colorado-based company consults the tribe on growing and selling marijuana.

However, stock in the publicly-traded company has plummeted over the last week.

The tribe’s executive committee voted in June to make the sale and use of marijuana legal on its reservation in Moody County, about 45 miles north of Sioux Falls.

“The federal government creating complex tribal laws and then making determinations if it is or isn’t going to enforce certain laws which has really created the problem”.

“Including but not limited to any illegal transport into or out of the reservation”, Peterson said in a statement.

Jackley says pausing production was a step in the right direction.

“The attorney general is basically telling me and other South Dakotans who have moved away to states where marijuana is legal that we are technically not allowed to come home for the holidays. If I go to South Dakota for Christmas, just because I have marijuana in my bloodstream, I am a walking felon because I could be charged at any time”, Emmett Reistroffer said, a marijuana advocate living in Denver.

The Omaha Tribe is the first to consider legalizing marijuana on the territory of its reservation in Nebraska.

Seth Pearman said the suspension is pivotal to the continued success of the marijuana venture and that tribal leadership is confident that after getting clarification from the U.S. Department of Justice, “it will be better suited to succeed”. In South Dakota, marijuana plants were seized indicating that while the federal level looks indulgently at these operations, states understand enforcement in a different manner.

Pearman made it clear in a statement he released Saturday that the tribe only wants this to be a suspension and eventually wants to successfully participate in the marijuana industry.