VERMILION RESERVATION- When recreational marijuana became legal on Tuesday, hoards of eager buyers descended upon the state’s only marijuana dispensary, Red Lake Nation’s NativeCare facility.
Recognized as a sovereign nation in the state’s landmark marijuana law with the ability to set its own rules regarding recreational marijuana sales and use, Red Lake was positioned to take early advantage of sales because of a medicinal marijuana program they established in 2020. The band was able to parlay that production to supply the recreational market on day one.
Meanwhile, a big question in the North Country is what this area’s sovereign Native nation, the Bois Forte Band, is planning in hopes of tapping this potentially lucrative market. The Timberjay talked Tuesday with Mayan Beltran, CEO of the Bois Forte Development Corporation (BFDC), the business arm of the Band, to find out.
“We haven’t gone down that recreational road yet, although the tribe is looking very deeply into it,” Beltran said. “I sent out a request for proposals for a feasibility study. The deadline closed last Friday.
Once we get the feasibility study back from the company we’re going to work with, we can get more information and do a community survey. We want to make sure we would be building it to the capacity of this region, you know, not under and not over, obviously. I wish we would have been ahead like (Red Lake) but our Band doesn’t move as fast. We actually go through these discussions and surveys and feasibility studies to decide as a Band, is this a venture we want to go into?”
It’s standard practice in the Bois Forte Band for members to be given the opportunity to vote on any new business venture leadership is proposing. A recent example of that is when Band members voted to approve building a new convenience store in Eveleth after having the opportunity to review and publicly discuss the feasibility study for that project. That endeavor recently went by the wayside after the cost of construction soared and the city of Eveleth demanded stipulations on the project that the Band found unacceptable.
Beltran stressed that input from Band members will be integral to the direction the Band will take with recreational marijuana.
“You know you’re never going to get 100 percent buy-in on anything,” Beltran said. “What you want to do is be transparent and you want to give people the ability to voice their opinions. That doesn’t mean you’re going to be able to do everything everybody wants to do, but it gives them the ability to voice their opinions, and you can take that into consideration when making your decision. We’re talking about cannabis and not everybody’s going to be pro-cannabis. There are some people that have concerns about it. We have to address them, we have to listen, you know, we have to come up with solutions if it goes in a direction they’re not happy with. There could be some dollars that go to drug and alcohol awareness programs, things like that that could help in that manner.”
And while the Band isn’t yet able to take advantage of the new law, should they decide to move ahead with recreational marijuana they will likely still be well ahead of the game. Minnesota’s first recreational dispensaries outside reservations likely won’t open until early 2025 after the state creates the Office of Cannabis Management and sets up a licensing system. If Band members give the go ahead, Beltran suggested they could be up and running within as little as four months.
“It may take maybe four months to get something built, growing and then have our own products,” he said. “You just have to throw up a greenhouse and you start production. Depending on what kind of strains of cannabis you’re using, it could take three months to six months to grow those types of strains. So, depending on which ones it could be around four to five months, and we could already have product. We will be behind the two that are already ready (Red Lake and White Earth, which will open a medical dispensary this month and recently passed a recreational marijuana policy). But we would be ahead of any other state organization or business that would like to try to compete in that realm.”
Cannabis edibles
The Band recently stepped into the cannabis-infused edibles and beverages market by opening a smoke shop featuring those products at Fortune Bay Resort Casino, and by offering them for sale at the Y-Store south of Tower and the C-Store at Nett Lake.
“When the edible products, the hemp-derived products became legal in the state of Minnesota, the tribe reached out and said, hey, we probably should get into this market,” Beltran said.
The smoke shop was greenlit in November by the Bois Forte Tribal Council at its BFDC meeting, allocating $150,000 for the project.
Situated on the casino’s first floor, the 2,500-square-foot retail space required reconfiguration of a section of slot machines, resulting in a net loss of 17 machines that were returned to their vendors. The primary focus of the shop is on CBD and THC edibles and other products that align with the state-established ceilings for content and packaging.
“We didn’t go too crazy with the smoke shop due to the possibility of recreational marijuana, but we did build it to be sort of a superstore, where we have more products and more variety than most that are distributing those type of products,” Beltran said. “Obviously we have other things like glass products, paraphernalia, cigars and smoking tobacco products, and wellness products like CBD creams and oils and lotions and all that stuff.”
Like many North Country businesses that have had challenges finding employees, Fortune Bay had some difficulty initially staffing the smoke shop. The shop has largely been in “soft opening” mode as more staff have been added and hours gradually expanded. Current days and hours of operation are Thursday, 1 p.m.-6 p.m., Friday and Saturday, 1 p.m.-10 p.m., and Sunday, 11 a.m.-6 p.m.
Unlike some other amenities at the resort, the smoke shop hasn’t yet been given a unique name, and that’s by design, Beltran said. People are familiar with the term smoke shop and what they have to offer, he noted. And they’re also waiting to see what direction the Band will take with recreational marijuana. The smoke shop could become the Band’s dispensary, which could possibly influence naming. And sales of recreational marijuana would likely have a significant impact on sales of CBD and THC products.
“In the states that have recreational marijuana, about 90 percent of sales are flower. The other 10 percent are vape and edible products,” Beltran said. “So, it’s not going to be as prevalent and won’t be that big of a market once recreational marijuana is in full swing in Minnesota.”
But in the current marketplace, cannabis edibles are viable products, and Bois Forte has tried to capitalize on that market by expanding sales to the Y-Store just before the Fourth of July and to the Nett Lake C-Store about two weeks ago. Interest in the products has been good at all three of the Band’s sales sites, Beltran said.
“It’s been really good actually, because we didn’t really do a lot of advertising,” he said. “People are walking in and just checking it out and our purchases, our average sales have gone up daily. And a lot of people are coming in just asking questions.”