On Feb. 11, MinnPost’s Peter Callaghan revealed that the Walz administration was deep into finalizing a compact with Minnesota native bands over cannabis production/sales. The implication was that they would potentially enter the trade before the small and disadvantaged businesses that had been the legislature’s priority, due to the state’s slow rollout. (Ten tribes would each be allowed to operate five dispensaries anywhere in the state.)

The DFL’s reliable fealty to the state’s Native American tribes is presumptive, and on the surface, well-meaning. It appears the state is determined to give tribes first dibs on every new, regulated sin activity.

Now before my liberal friends freak out, no one has gotten a rawer deal than America’s native citizens. And despite government efforts on their behalf, many tribal nations remain deeply impoverished and visited by all manner of social ills. Some of this is due to geographic isolation, some due to other factors. Native Americans are not, by nature, money motivated people. (I covered the tribal casino boom of the 1990s and understand quite a bit about Native American history, culture, and efforts to right historical wrongs.)

Yet today states allow (encourage?) tribes to sell cigarettes and even liquor, operate casinos, and now Minnesota is about to make them the center of the state’s cannabis and sports betting industries (exclusively in the latter case).

What’s the common denominator? These are all pastimes with pronounced harms. It has always struck me as ironic, if not intentional, that our way of making amends with tribal nations has been to push them into industries often steeped in exploitative practices (such as cashing payroll checks at casinos) to achieve economic self-determination.

Tribes today operate some of the most successful casinos in America, from Foxwoods outside New York City to Mystic Lake near Minneapolis to Yaamava’ at San Miguel on LA’s outskirts. To say gaming has transformed the standard of living of the Shakopee Mdewakanton nation and several other area tribes is understatement. Yet all the activities we’ve bestowed on tribal nations have common addictive aspects and social costs. Some profoundly so, some mildly so.

I lean libertarian by nature. I’m in favor of decriminalizing a host of activities we now criminalize, from drug use to the sex trade. But I’m not orthodox enough to insist this comes without a price. And there’s something fundamentally creepy about making America’s economic victims our pushers.

I like weed. I’ve been buying it at legal venues in other states for nearly a decade. But I also understand that there are people whose brain chemistry predisposes them to psychosis when using cannabis, and there remains lots of essential research to be done about the effects of regular use on the body and the underdeveloped brains of young adults.

As for sports betting, there is anecdotal data coming out of jurisdictions that have legalized that suggest it drives even greater social isolation in young men, not to mention the traditional harms of addiction and financial ruin. Those toll-free phone numbers posted in the boilerplate of sports betting ads aren’t as salvational as the fine lawyers who write them believe!

So it sort of fascinates me that the state’s priority is to place these newly legal pastimes on tribal entities, as well as specifically designated groups who have been victimized by cannabis laws. Neither is equipped to parse social costs, yet we will be asking them to exercise due diligence in their business practices.

The paradoxes are rich and pervasive. I particularly love the image of the race-and-identity preoccupied DFL tossing these care packages to their tribal wards. It’s a pyrrhic sort of noblesse oblige. I’m not a political moralist, but it does make ennobling dodgy public policy so simple when you can accomplish it in the name of social justice.

So what am I suggesting? That we should instead grant the privileges to Caesars and Walgreen’s and other rapacious Fortune 500s? Maybe not, but at least they are in a position to accept and compensate for the social liability they create.

I’m eager to place a legal bet on a Twins game as I enter Target Field one of these years and buy my pot locally. But there’s something about the way we do this in Minnesota—wrapping ourselves in the cloak of righteousness while leaving both sellers and buyers on the downstream of an ethical sewage pipe—which existentially discomforts me.