No need to wait for recreational cannabis: It’s already for sale on Native land

Just 35 miles from Buffalo, along Route 20 in Irving, the roadside is dotted with stores selling marijuana.

Billboards promote pot businesses. One gas station along Route 20 has a sign with the slogan, “Come for gas, leave with grass.”

It will be months before recreational cannabis can be legally sold in New York, but on Western New York’s Native American lands, pot is already openly for sale. The shops are located on sovereign territory, which allows the stores to get around the plodding state rule-making process and get a jump on would-be competitors in the legal pot market.

In Cattaraugus, Allegany and Genesee counties, members of the Seneca Nation of Indians and Tonawanda Seneca Nation have opened stores. Some shops are even in trailers and residences – all trying to take advantage of what is estimated to be a $4 billion industry in New York.

Just like gas stations and smoke shops on Native land, these businesses don’t collect sales taxes, likely giving them a price advantage when their regulated competitors are allowed to open. And so far, store owners say, New York State has left them alone.

“Sales are through the roof,” said Mike Jimerson, who opened The Lab Dispensary in Irving with his wife, Heidi, in October. “I’m very surprised how far we have come in four-and-a-half months.”

Not all New York tribes embrace the marijuana business. The Tuscarora Nation in Niagara County has outlawed the sale of recreational marijuana, according to a statement from its leadership. The Seneca Nation of Indians is creating rules, but for now marijuana business on Seneca territory are operating on their own.

Seneca Nation leadership declined to comment.

But elsewhere, Native American entrepreneurs are treating pot like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

 “The analogy I have used,” said Jesse Spring, who runs two dispensaries, “at least with my family and close circle, was when that wave comes, we need to set ourselves up so that we’re riding that thing.”

‘If you sell a good product, they’re going to find you’

The Jimersons opened The Lab Dispensary on Old Lakeshore Road in Irving, a bit off the beaten path from where most shops are selling recreational marijuana on the Cattaraugus territory.

But it hasn’t mattered. Mike Jimerson, also a judge in the Peacemaker’s Court on the Cattaraugus territory, projects first-year sales to be around $2.5 million.

His wife has since been able to quit her full-time job with Seneca Nation to work at the shop and his stepdaughter, sister and cousin have also come to the shop.

“We were kind of scared of it at the beginning to put up that much money and have to be willing to lose that money,” said Jimerson, whose father owned TPS, a propane company in Silver Creek, and helped start Catt-Rez Enterprises, a gas station that his sister now owns.

Jimerson isn’t worried about his shop’s rural location, about 35 miles south of Buffalo. “My dad always told me that if you sell a good product, they’re going to find you.”

Jesse and Ruby Spring, who run two dispensaries, one in Basom in Genesee County and the other in Irving, respectively, have prepared for years for this opportunity.

“When you’re invested in this and live it, breath it and dream it, that’s different as opposed to someone who says, ‘I’m going to open a shed around the corner and do this,’ and is only in it for the money,” Jesse Spring said.

Sales have gone up each week since the Springs started selling recreational marijuana last year, he said.

Spring has taken some of his family and interested people from other nations to Oaksterdam University in Oakland, Calif., the first established cannabis college, where they learned about the flowering plant and how it is cultivated. His employees, or “budtenders,” have also taken a certification course available through the university.

In addition, he took trips to some of the original states that legalized recreational marijuana, such as Colorado, California, Oregon, Washington and Massachusetts, to see how dispensaries there operate. In the process, he connected with the Paiute Indian Tribe, which operates a 1,600-square-foot dispensary in Las Vegas.

“We had that foresight and vision that this was coming whether people want to embrace it or not,” said Spring, who owns Shaman Medicinal, while his wife runs Native Hypemart.

Making many of the products sold in his store has been an education for Jimerson.

He has had to learn about THC levels, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana; indica and sativa strains, species of cannabis, and hybrid, a combination of the two; as well as dominants that produce higher THC levels and percentages that determine marijuana strength levels. He’s also learned how to extract the flowering plant, how to use dabs to make a gummy and the difference in terpene level between live resin and concentrates.

Shop owners are finding much of their sales is related to pain management.

Spring makes an infused honey product that he said one of his clients drives from Pennsylvania to get.

Native American leadership’s stance

Spring said he has a good relationship with the chief from Tonawanda Seneca Nation, independent of the Seneca Indian Nation. The two were able to agree upon and draw up rules and regulations for the sale of marijuana.

Growing up with a smoke shop background, Spring said it has been an easy transition from the tobacco industry to recreational marijuana.

The Seneca Nation has created a Cannabis Department and Hemp Compliance Administrator to help regulate the production of cannabis on Seneca Nation territory.

On the Seneca’s website there are two forms, the first a 24-page ordinance governing the cultivation of hemp and licensing for sales on Seneca Nation territories and a seven-page hemp producer application. But, to this point, most businesses have taken it on their own to get started.

Tuscarora nation leadership said it considered the creation of a cannabis industry but decided against it after hearing the concerns of the Tuscarora people.

The transportation, sale and consumption of recreational marijuana is prohibited by the Tuscarora Nation, and “all persons are prohibited from entering the territory of the Tuscarora Nation with the intention of participating in any illegal commerce, including cannabis.”

“This process of self-determination can only be conducted by the Tuscarora Nation,” the statement reads. “Thus, individuals cannot invoke sovereignty without the informed consent of the Nation.”

As for the state, the Office of Cannabis Management can enter into agreements with Native American governments through compacts to integrate them into the state program if all parties can agree to terms, according to spokesman Freeman Klopott.

No slowdown anticipated

By next year, these Native American businesses are expected to have competition – a lot of it – from shops throughout the state as regulations are finalized by the state’s Cannabis Control Board and Office of Cannabis Management.

But shops on Native land will hold a distinct pricing advantage – as is the case with the sale of gas and tobacco – because the state will not tax marijuana sales on native territories.

Spring said he’ll look to reinvent his business and stay ahead of the curve once competition opens up across the state. 

“The only place I see us going is up from here,” Jimerson said. “I don’t see anything but good things.”