NM Sheriff Conviscates Marijuana Plants; Industrial Scale Cannabis Farms on Navajo Land

FARMINGTON, NM — Three weeks ago, city police and San Juan County sheriff’s deputies got a tip about a man moving a truckload of marijuana into a budget motel on the west side of town. When they began knocking on doors at the Travel Inn on Oct. 8, they could hardly believe their eyes: numerous rooms had been converted into a makeshift assembly line for processing cannabis. Officers waded knee-deep through piles of buds, and discovered seventeen Chinese men and women hard at work pruning the plants. Police seized 2,000 pounds of suspected marijuana, with an estimated street value of $2.8 million. It was the biggest marijuana bust ever made in San Juan County, according to Sheriff Shane Ferrari. “What we found in there was only a fraction, maybe 25 percent of what they’re growing in a single greenhouse on the reservation,” he told Searchlight New Mexico. If investigators determine that figure is accurate, it could mean the Shiprock farms are capable of growing thousands of tons of illegal marijuana, potentially worth billions of dollars. Over the past year, local Navajo farm board president Dineh Benally has overseen the creation of a vast network of industrial-scale black-market cannabis farms that now stretch across the Shiprock Chapter. Over 1,000 workers from predominantly Chinese neighborhoods in Los Angeles and New York have arrived on the reservation to manage and work the farms. Hundreds of cannabis greenhouses have been built atop 36 farms traditionally dedicated to corn, a food staple that is central to Navajo ceremonies. Transformation of the land has created simmering resentments across the community...MORE

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I recall that a Native American tribe in NM grew tobacco and manufactured organic cigarettes. At the time you couldn't legally grow tobacco unless you had a tobacco allotment issued by the USDA.  The tobacco law didn't apply to tribes. All of which makes me wonder, "what is the legal status of marijuana grown on tribal lands"?