South Dakota Lawmakers Kill Bill That Sought To Overturn Voter-Approved Medical Marijuana Law

A South Dakota legislative committee has rejected a invoice that might have reversed the state’s voter-approved legalization of medical marijuana. The panel did advance separate laws nonetheless, to take away a authorized protection for medical hashish sufferers who don’t have registry identification playing cards.

If enacted, HB 1101, from Rep. Travis Ismay (R), would have repealed South Dakota’s medical hashish statutes altogether, successfully ending this system. On Tuesday, nonetheless, the House Health and Human Services voted 7 to six to kill the measure.

Prior to being elected to the legislature final 12 months, Ismay unsuccessfully sought to position an initiative on the 2024 poll to scrap the state’s medical marijuana regulation. Now, his invoice to do the identical has stalled.

Ahead of the vote, the lawmaker instructed colleagues on Tuesday that there is no such thing as a distinction between medical hashish and leisure marijuana, saying they’re “the same thing.”

“I know you’re going to hear a whole lot of testimony about how medical marijuana saved people’s lives, but I’ll tell you something. I have a daughter that it destroyed her life—absolutely destroyed it,” Ismay mentioned.

“If you promote something as a medicine and say, ‘there’s no no bad side effects, it’s perfectly harmless,’ kids are going to try it,” he mentioned. “My kid did, and it wasn’t the last thing she tried. It was a stepping stool, to the next bad drug and the next bad drug. It’s a horrible thing.”

Other lawmakers and opposition witnesses argued that it will be inappropriate for the legislature to overturn the desire of voters to authorised the legalization of medical hashish on the poll in 2020.

“We had voters that voted on a medical marijuana program, and I want to respect the voters in that,” Rep. Taylor Rehfeldt (R) mentioned.

To the extent Ismay and different have issues about the best way hashish entry has rolled out within the state, she mentioned they need to convey them to an oversight committee that’s tasked with making adjustments to this system.

“There is an ability to compromise. There is an ability for the parties to come to the table,” Rehfeldt mentioned. “But this is just too extreme. This just removes an industry that has come into the state, that has been established, that has worked very hard to make sure that patients have accessibility.”

Liz Tiger of the advocacy group New Approach South Dakota instructed committee members that she makes use of medical hashish to deal with systemic scleroderma.

“Living on opioids is not a life. I cannot tolerate Tylenol, and my rheumatologist has advised that NSAIDs like ibuprofen are not appropriate for me,” she mentioned.

The medical hashish program offers her entry to efficient merchandise and “protects me from arrest, all of which enable me to show up fully for my family, my business and my career as a community organizer,” Tiger mentioned. “I’m not alone. Approximately 11,000 patients rely on this program, just as I do.”

The South Dakota Defense Lawyers Association’s Terra Larson identified that if lawmakers repealed the medical marijuana regulation, “people have the choice between having their pain alleviated or becoming criminals.”

She famous that felony costs would then apply for people who find themselves at the moment authorized sufferers.

“When we are thinking about building a multi-million-dollar prison in this state, and we are thinking about wanting to add all of these additional felonies and potential felons in our state, we’ve got to really think of where we’re going to put them,” Larson mentioned. “There’s been extensive discussion about, when this prison is built, that it’s going to be 90 percent full. If we add, theoretically, 11,000 new felons, where are we going to put them?”

Moments later, Ismay pushed again, saying that he’s heard marijuana reform supporters say that the substance “isn’t habit forming.”

“So then just stop smoking weed,” the GOP lawmaker mentioned in protection of his bill. “You won’t go to prison. Just kind of an easy fix, I think, if it’s not addictive.”

Moments after killing Ismay’s repeal laws, the committee did approve a separate bill from the lawmaker, nonetheless, to take away the power of sufferers who don’t have registry identification playing cards to lift a authorized protection in courtroom to keep away from being convicted of violating the state’s marijuana legal guidelines.

That measure superior on a 9 to 4 vote.

While South Dakota voters approved the medical marijuana law with nearly 70 percent support in 2020, Ismay first tried to reverse the reform as a citizen, submitting an initiative that he sought to position on the 2024 poll. The state attorney general released a final summary of the proposal, but it surely didn’t in the end qualify.

Prior to the election, backers of a separate poll measure to legalize adult-use hashish in South Dakota—which voters rejected last November—had called on state officials to scuttle Ismay’s initiative. South Dakotans for Better Marijuana Laws argued that petitions in help of the medical hashish repeal measure did not observe state necessities.

With respect to adult-use legalization efforts within the state, former Gov. Kristi Noem (R)—who was lately confirmed to steer the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) underneath the second Trump administration—was among the many opponents of the reform proposal. In a video advert launched final 12 months, she urged constituents to reject the reform initiative, stating that it’s “not good for our kids” and gained’t “improve our communities.”

“The fact is, I’ve never met someone who got smarter from smoking pot,” the previous governor mentioned on the time.

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After voters authorised medical hashish legalization in 2020, Noem tried to get the legislature to approve a bill to delay implementation for an extra 12 months. But whereas it cleared the House, negotiators have been unable to succeed in an settlement with the Senate in convention, delivering a defeat to the governor.

In response, Noem’s office started exploring a compromise, with one proposal that got here out of her administration to decriminalize possession of as much as one ounce of hashish, restrict the variety of crops that sufferers may domesticate to a few and prohibit folks underneath 21 from qualifying for medical marijuana.

In the 2022 legislative session, the House rejected a legalization bill that the Senate had passed, successfully leaving it as much as activists to get on the poll once more.

A Marijuana Interim Study Committee, headed by legislative leaders, was established to discover hashish coverage reform, and the panel in November 2021 really helpful that the legislature take up legalization. The House-defeated laws was one of many direct merchandise of that suggestion.

North Dakota Lawmakers Approve Bill To Expand Marijuana Decriminalization, Making Low-Level Possession A $150 Citation