Some Local News from the Bondi Hearing

Apparently during the long Bondi hearing, the more scurrilous of my Senators had some things to say about my neighbors the Eastern Band of Cherokee. (That link is to a marijuana-focused newspaper, which I don't mean to suggest is objective; I'm merely citing it because it's the only place I've been able to find an extended quotation of his remarks rather than a characterization of them by the media.)

The Eastern Band put out a statement on the subject, since he didn't bother to talk to them about it.

I don't know if I agree that the Senator "knows full well" anything at all except how to line his pockets with corporate donations. His point in calling them an "island" is that they have some degree of sovereign control over their boundary lands here in Western North Carolina, where they are good neighbors and provide a welcoming place to travelers should you drop in to visit them. They even welcome bikers, sometimes.

The EBCI have decided to sell marijuana for consumption, even recreational consumption, on their own land. I've never used marijuana and can't attest to the quality of it or indeed anything about it except its popularity: to my great amusement I find tribal police are used to direct traffic at their dispensary rather than busting people for using the stuff as the police might be doing anywhere else. I like to tease the deputies I know, for whom busting people for drugs remains a major part of their day, that they'll probably soon be re-tasked in the same manner and ought to start getting used to the idea.

The EBCI are following what has become an established business model of catering to what people want; they run their casinos on money trucked in from outside themselves, and they sell marijuana mostly to people who come visiting to buy it. You can play with their system here; it seems to allow you to place an online order so that you can skip the line when you come to pick it up locally, at which time I'd imagine they check your ID if they are supposed to do so. It doesn't seem to have a delivery option at all, which Tillis might have known if he'd bothered to check (or to just ask them).

Tillis went on: "We’ve got to get it solved at the federal level. We’ve got to capture revenue,” he said. “That revenue needs to go back to federal law enforcement, and we need to have a lot more focus on what I think are unsafe and inconsistent practices across the state." With all due respect, which is none, 'capturing revenue' is his job and not hers; if he wants to raise taxes even higher, that's Congress' department. Giving that money to Federal law enforcement is almost certainly a bad use of it; he might instead do something to pay down the gigantic debts he and his ilk have consistently produced through their so-called governance. Or, better yet, he might turn his attention to cutting spending rather than finding new sources of 'revenue' for him to spend.