Selling marijuana on tribal lands in New York State has become a booming business for Native Americans, who are capitalizing on the slow pace of regulating the state’s newly legal marijuana industry. The New York Times reports from an upstate reservation, on the northern border with Canada, which is doing a brisk trade in pot products, drawing customers from across the region. However, the new enterprises exist in a sort of gray area, moving faster to set up dispensaries than the government in Albany can impose a regulatory body to oversee the new cannabis industry. There’s also a dispute within the tribal government, with some groups claiming the businesses are operating outside the laws of the reservation. Once again, we see that legalization is moving ahead before rules and regulations can be established to oversee and monitor the new industry.
Meanwhile, it’s no surprise that after pot sales boomed during the pandemic, employment in the sector nationwide would also post extraordinary growth. Today, more than 320,000 Americans work in the industry, a 32 percent increase from ast year, making marijuana one of the nation’s fastest-growing sectors. The industry added nearly 80,000 jobs last year, many coming from the restaurant and retail, and other service sectors, which was hit by the lockdowns. The growth of the industry has indeed been dynamic: the U.S. now has more cannabis workers than dentists, paramedics, or electrical engineers.
And finally, all that pot for sale has consequences for consumers: a new report shows that cases of marijuana over-consumption have led to an increase in cannabis-related intoxication requiring medical attention. Poison control centers have documented a dramatic increase in the number of reports involving edible cannabis, rising from 8.4 percent to 31 percent between 2017 and 2019—especially for children under 10, with these products making up 48 percent of reported cases. Such cases of intoxication in children are associated with coma, severe respiratory depression that can lead to death.