The road to cannabis riches hasn’t been without some hiccups. The dispensary is owned by the Las Vegas Paiute Tribe. Chris Spotted Eagle, Las Vegas Paiute Tribe chairman of the Las Vegas Paiutes, stands outside the Nuwu Cannabis Marketplace drive-thru window at 1235 Paiute Circle on Thursday, March 14, 2019. The Paiutes’ smoke shop, which still welcomes a nation-leading 1,500 customers per day, has also seen its business decline by as much as 25 percent from 2010, Tso said.įor that reason, Las Vegas Paiute leaders decided in 2015 – when marijuana was still medical-only in Nevada – that the plant would be the tribe’s way of padding its pockets for the future. While many Native American tribes across the United States have profited handsomely by operating a casino, the Paiutes’ competition from the Strip has dashed any real hopes of the tribe cashing in on a gaming venue. The Paiutes’ embracing of the cannabis plant has been a winning formula in a country where tobacco usage has declined drastically and in a state where casinos and gambling are legal. But NuWu’s profits are earmarked for the Paiutes’ general fund, which supports the medical and educational expenses of the tribe’s members as well as future tribal business investments in marijuana and other industries.
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Only 10 of the Paiute tribe’s 56 members work full 40-hour weeks at the dispensary the rest of NuWu’s employees are from outside the tribe. Separate cultivation and production facilities, slated to open later this year next to NuWu North, will allow the tribe to employ up to 200 people to help manage its growing marijuana empire.
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The two dispensaries welcome as many as 4,000 daily customers via the storefronts and 24-hour drive-through windows located on the backside of both facilities. 18 celebrated the grand opening of a second, smaller dispensary - Nuwu North - near the tribe’s golf resort by the mountain.
(Jeff Scheid-Nevada Independent)Īfter opening the 15,800-square-foot NuWu Cannabis Marketplace in October 2017 - then the largest dispensary in Nevada - on tribal land near downtown Las Vegas, the Paiutes on Jan. Customers gather inside Nuwu Cannabis Marketplace at 1235 Paiute Circle on Thursday, March 14, 2019. But where Tso stands on this cool winter afternoon, the tribe is preparing to preserve its economic future with its latest cash crop: cannabis. The Paiutes’ ancient migratory route is spotted with housing subdivisions and roads. Thousands of years later, Snow Mountain – known outside the tribal community as Mount Charleston – is used for skiing and other outdoor recreational activities by people not affiliated with the tribe. Those who went onto the pine trees and didn’t get drowned by the water transformed into who we are today.” When the world was flooded, the ants went up to the mountain. “When the Creator made us, he made us like ants. "That's our creation story and that's where we came from,” Tso says. When temperatures cooled down in the area now known as Las Vegas, Tso says, the Paiute tribe would migrate back down Snow Mountain toward a natural spring located in Las Vegas that’s now known as Springs Preserve. Tso, who served as the chairman of the Las Vegas Paiute Tribe for more than a decade before stepping down last year, recalls the story of his ancestors making the journey each year from near where he stood to the mountainous area to escape the desert heat. Benny Tso stands on the curb of a concrete sidewalk looking up at a snow-covered mountaintop, five miles in the distance.