5 things to know today: Legal pot, Pot sales, Sandi Sanford, Power Five, Outdoor movies

Beginning Tuesday, Aug. 1, it is legal for adults age 21 and older to consume cannabis in Minnesota, the 23rd state to permit recreational use.

Cannabis has been available to some Minnesotans since July 1, 2015, when the state launched its Medical Cannabis Program. Patients can be prescribed cannabis for chronic pain, irritable bowel syndrome, seizures and 16 other medical conditions.

Minnesotans have also had access to food, drink, body care and supplement products that contain cannabidiol, CBD, which can be found in the cannabis sativa plant. CBD is FDA-approved as a treatment for epilepsy, according to Mayo Clinic.

Additionally, in July 2022, state law permitted the sale and consumption of edibles containing tetrahydrocannabinol, THC, derived from hemp, which is the same species — though a different cultivar — of cannabis plant but contains lower levels of THC, the compound that produces a high.

Read more from Forum News Service's Dené K. Dryden

Tuesday marked a historic occasion for the Red Lake Nation and the state of Minnesota as people from near and far visited Red Lake’s NativeCare dispensary for the first day of recreational marijuana sales in the state.

As the first dispensary to open up shop in the entire state, several hundred eager patrons waited in line for a chance to step inside NativeCare once 11 a.m. rolled around.

Foot traffic inside the dispensary was limited to a few people at a time while everyone else waited outside. While initially met with blue skies, a torrential downpour dampened the day by the afternoon.

However, the rain did not extinguish the excitement, as hardly anybody stepped out of line and instead held tarps above their heads, determined to keep their hard-earned spots.

“I was handing out tar paper, trash bags, rain suits, anything we had available,” Red Lake Tribal Secretary Sam Strong said after the rain subsided, “but nobody moved. We had a canopy to stand under, and they didn’t care.”

Read more from Forum News Service's Daltyn Lofstrom

The way Sandra Sanford is perceived, by people both inside and outside of the North Dakota Republican Party, is not how she sees herself.

Sanford, 51, who goes by Sandi, has been cast as part of an ultra-right faction that recently “took over” the party when she was elected as state GOP chairwoman.

Wife of the former Lt. Gov. Brent Sanford, she defeated incumbent party Chairman Perrie Schafer on June 16 in Fargo by a single vote.

She’s been labeled a “culture warrior” which she once called a “badge of honor,” but she also told The Forum she’s simply doing what most moms would do.

“As a culture warrior, am I a mom that has asked questions about what's happening? Yes, I have and I am not going to apologize for the questions that I've asked,” she said.

The labels come from her stands against the COVID-19 vaccine and mask mandates, books with certain sexual content in school libraries and her belief that gay marriage threatens the sanctity of "biblical marriage."

“I questioned the agenda … and that is what has now created this narrative of being extreme,” she said.

Nick Hacker, former NDGOP treasurer, was among the slate of five party leaders ousted in the June internal party election.

Read more from The Forum's Robin Huebner

Missouri Valley Football Conference commissioner Patty Viverito did not waste time in getting to the heart of the problem with major college football. In her annual state of the Valley address, she outlined a scenario of out of control boosters, players being treated as employees and schools tampering with other team’s players.

Name, image, likeness (NIL) at its core is fine, she said. It’s the other stuff that has come from it that has made college football at its highest levels a free-for-all.

“It’s tampering, it’s cheating, it’s madness,” she said.

Viverito said she hopes either Congress or new NCAA executive director Charlie Baker will impose changes to bring “some sanity to this landscape.”

“We will come up with an NCAA solution if Congress doesn’t intervene,” she said, “before we’re impacted.”

The impact appears minimal with Valley schools starting collectives like the unveiling of North Dakota State’s The Green and the Gold Collective this week. Viverito said she hasn’t spoken with any Valley programs on NIL collectives saying that has to be a national-level conversation.

Meanwhile, at the local level, Bison head coach Matt Entz said his program has lost players to the NCAA transfer portal “in search of chasing dollars.” The results for the players in that regard appear to be a mixed bag at best.