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A medical marijuana company is marketing directly to Native Americans. Scottsdale, Arizona-based Ultra Health signed a major sponsorship deal with the popular Gathering of Nations Powwow in Albuquerque. The deal includes putting the Ultra Health company name in the powwow title. Is this the beginning of a new brand of Native American marketing? Are you worried about the association between marijuana and a major powwow?
Guests:
Derek Mathews – founder and director of the Gathering of Nations Powwow
Cristala Mussato-Allen (Caddo) – executive director of Native Workplace Inc.
Duke Rodriguez – president and CEO of Ultra Health
Break Music: Sewa Ania (song) Gabriel Ayala (artist) Live At the Mission (album)
(What I posted on the Ultra Health Page) with no response
My point with this sponsorship is not so much with the industry and the use of Marijuana for medical purposes. My issue was more so for two reasons, the first being with the inaccuracy of a broad statement by Ultra Health representative, Leonard Salgado, that marijuana has had, as stated a “connection with the Native American communities for hundreds of years”. To generalize Native Americans as one singular group, insinuates that all tribes have an acceptance of marijuana use, when in fact many tribes have no historic ties to marijuana for medicinal or religious purposes.
Second, the issue of sponsorship by a Medical Cannabis Provider Ultra Health at a Native American themed event, is one that needs considerably more discussion and thought to whether this is a right fit or not. For many generations now, Native Americans have suffered the harsh impacts of colonization and ethnocide by the United States Government. As a result, cultural loss of identity, language loss, poverty and addictions have been endemic throughout native communities. To escape these generational hardships of historic trauma our people have sought ways to alter consciousness whether through alcohol or other controlled substances, including marijuana, all becoming addictive contrary to your predictable Facebook response. The use of marijuana, by our youth has resulted in poor academic performance levels, due to marijuana altering the effects of Dopamine, which the brain utilizes to signal reward, accomplishment, basically the rewards center of our brains. Of course you know this, so further explanation is not warranted.
In the end, sure Cannabis may have its place in medicine, and prove to be successful, but its place in our culture needs to be deeply discussed. As native cultures, we need to discuss what our solutions are in resolving historic, family and or individual trauma. Consuming alcohol by adults and or our youth continuing light up to seek escape, has no place in our cultures. To have GON, accept Ultra Health’s financial sponsorship, sends the wrong message about who we are as Native people and continues to give our youth further justification for smoking that next bowl. As adults, we need to educate them, not give them sponsorship icons.
You are lumping cannabis in with other destructive substances such as alcohol and it is wildly inaccurate. Sure, not all tribes use cannabis. But some have for many many years. I believe you are overlooking the truly huge economic opportunity cannabis companies are giving tribes
Leonard’s comment was phrased too generally; he should have said some or many tribes have used it historically. That being said, Ultra Health does not sell altered states of consciousness as you suggest, but rather medicine that has been scientifically proven to help the conditions that qualify someone for a medical cannabis card in New Mexico. If they were a recreational cannabis company your objection would make much more sense.
As for your dopamine comment, are you aware that our brain releases such reward chemicals when we eat sugar, hug someone, exercise, etc? Does that make any company related to these activities responsible for poor performance in school? Would you object to a gym or a food company sponsoring this event? If not, maybe you should rethink why you’re objecting to this sponsorship.
This sponsorship has nothing to do with tribal communities actually using medical cannabis. If it meant dispensaries were popping up on reservations, then discussing the place of cannabis in those communities would be warranted. But guess what? No cannabis will be present at the GON Pow Wow, and Ultra Health does not sell to medical patients under the age of 18 without recommendations from multiple doctors and parental consent. So if youth are “smoking that next bowl”, they aren’t doing it because Ultra Health endorsed it.
I thought the show was very informative!! Admittedly I had my fears in the beginning about a cannabis sponsor at GON, but now I do believe it is a progressive step in the right direction
Cannabis, Hemp, and The Land Of Enchantment
By Jason Barker
(Medical Cannabis Patient & Organizer -LECUA Patient’s Coalition Of New Mexico)
New Mexico’s economy continues to be one of the slowest growing economies in the country. The state budget shortfalls for 2016, and this slow growth reveals too much dependence on largess by the federal government and oil revenues. Those sources of New Mexico’s economic malaise provide funding for education and Health and Human Services programs like Medicaid in our state. New Mexico spending by function in fiscal year, 2014 was 25.8% for Medicaid and that spending has increased from 22.1% in fiscal year, 2010. While during that same period of 2010-2014, K-12 Education and High Education both saw decreases in spending. And now in the state, half of all New Mexicans are on Medicaid or medicare.
Of the three most crucial budget demands upon the state: Public Schools, Medicaid, and Higher Education. Combined they provide the true economic and social multiplier with the greatest opportunity of success for the state’s residents and the state’s economy. Providing funding for these invaluable programs in our state can be achieved with cannabis legalization, industrial hemp legalization and the utilization of solar, wind, and geothermal energy sources.
The state has the renewable resources to potentially provide 1,000 times more clean energy than Public Service Company of New Mexico’s current demand, according to the state Energy Conservation and Management Division.
In a recent article in The Albuquerque Journal, “Legalize marijuana to adequately finance Medicaid” By Duke Rodriguez / Former Secretary, New Mexico Human Services Department; Principal, Ultra Health LLC. Mr. Rodriguez has left out his own financial interest in the legalization of cannabis in New Mexico, as a businessperson and not a medical professional. Ultra Health is a turnkey solutions provider for the cannabis industry, from retail medical dispensaries to commercial-scale cannabis production based in Arizona and operating in Arizona, New Mexico, and Nevada.
And as Secretary of Human Services in the cabinet of New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson, Mr. Rodriguez privatized Medicaid into a program called PROGRESS. The Albuquerque Journal summarized his approach then:
“With extremely limited input from advocates, consumers, the state legislature and state health, mental health and children’s and family departments, Rodriguez designed and pushed through his own plan.”
The plan was eventually scrapped by the State Supreme Court since Johnson’s administration imposed it without approval of the Legislature. This also resulted in Duke Rodriguez resigning amid allegations that he received money from a firm that collected millions of dollars in Medicaid payments from the state welfare department.
With New Mexico facing these budget challenges, our best corrective measure is legalization of social use cannabis and industrial hemp legalization in the state of New Mexico. In addition, to legislation for the utilization of solar, wind, and geothermal energy sources. The FY, 2017 General Fund revenue sources for New Mexico draws 43% from Sales taxes and 26% from Income taxes. Colorado cannabis tax revenues now greatly exceeds original estimates of $70 million per year now. Canada has had industrial hemp since 1998, and farmers there have reported net profits of $200 to $250 per acre. Most Canadian hemp is exported to the United States.
The revenues from social use cannabis legalization and industrial hemp legalization alone can fund our Medicaid program in a sound manner. And it will also decrease that dependence upon the federal government and pave a path for economic growth in several private sector areas.
New Mexico has the potential to be a national leader in the rapidly growing clean energy economy. Wind and solar power development is increasing, largely thanks to great resource potential, declining costs, and a successful state-level requirement that utilities supply 20 percent of their power from renewable sources by 2020. Thus, moving forward in this way would accelerate the state’s clean energy transition while delivering important economic, consumer, and public health benefits.
New Mexico has been providing Medical Cannabis to patients in the State since 1978, it’s time for New Mexico to return as the leader and pioneer in the sciences of medical cannabis and social use cannabis. New Mexico can be a new leader among states, by showing how social use cannabis legalization can be done without regulating it like alcohol and tobacco. New Mexico should legalize cannabis, regulate, and tax the adult social use of cannabis like herbal and nutritional supplements in New Mexico. As all use of cannabis has true therapeutic aspects in conjunction with the vast medicinal cannabis benefits. Ahóá New Mexico.
It’s funny Jason Barker, your well-written comment actually sounds pretty similar to the editorial you mentioned that was written by Duke Rodriguez…have you noticed that? If you compare them side-by-side there’s sections that are barely even paraphrased.