On Jan. 15, The Smoky Mountain News contacted almost every elected official in Haywood County for whom an email address was listed with the county’s board of elections. Around half failed to respond, but those who did were sometimes too verbose for print, so an excerpt from their response was used in the Jan. 23 edition of The Smoky Mountain News. In the interest of transparency, their full responses are included here.

The last couple of years have brought a sea change in attitudes about marijuana. I’m convinced pot will be legal in most of the U.S. within the next decade, and I think it will do a lot more good than harm.

The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians is a conservative tribe. Yet its Tribal Council voted two weeks ago to start drafting legislation that would allow marijuana to be produced on tribal land and prescribed for medicinal uses. Such a move would, of course, spawn a whole subset of economic development possibilities for growing and processing cannabis.

Just over a month after voting unanimously to study the pros and cons of legalizing marijuana on the Qualla Boundary, the Cherokee Tribal Council held a vote whose outcome was nearly a mirror image of the first. Last week, council voted 11-1 to uphold Principal Chief Patrick Lambert’s veto of the study, with Councilmember Travis Smith, of Birdtown, the sole nay vote.

Cherokee will take a look at legalizing marijuana on the Qualla Boundary, Tribal Council decided in a unanimous vote last week.