South Dakotans Prepare To Vote For Marijuana Legalization, Scare-Mongering Ads Hit The Airwaves

In less than a month, South Dakota's voters will decide whether or not to support recreational marijuana legalization, that is Measure 27, an initiative to the list of ballot questions for the November 2022 election.

Background:

In May, South Dakota's Secretary of State added Measure 27 to the list of ballot questions, providing the voters with yet another chance to weigh in on the legal status of adult-use cannabis. However, two Sioux Falls officials recently expressed concerns regarding the plant's legal status.

Mayor Paul TenHaken pointed to three "myths" coming from cannabis activists behind Measure 27, saying he strongly disagreed that the state's prisons are full of people with cannabis convictions. He contends that crime rates would not drop if marijuana were legal, but rather the opposite.

South Dakotans for Better Marijuana Laws

This time, via a new ad, South Dakotans for Better Marijuana Laws (SDBML) emphasized that “politicians used a legal technicality to overturn the law,” referencing a lawsuit supported by the office of Gov. Kristi Noem (R) that ended in the state Supreme Court invalidating the voter-approved initiative on procedural grounds because it determined the measure violated a single-subject rule, as Marijuana Moment reported.

“We’re still clogging up our courts and wasting police resources on marijuana arrests instead of focusing on real crime and seriously ill people including veterans with PTSD and cancer patients who still face difficulty accessing medical marijuana,” the ad said. “We can restore the will of the people, fight crime and end suffering by voting yes on Measure 27.”

Additionally, SDBML announced last week that it’s launching a 10-day state tour to register voters and educate the electorate about the initiative.

Protecting South Dakota Kids

Meanwhile, opponents are running an ad that is clearly stoking fear among parents. It opens with a video of children and the narrator saying “these are future drug addicts, future suicide victims, future victims of an impaired driver.”

“This is the future with initiated Measure 27. It would legalize drugs known to cause depression and suicide—drugs that put dangerous users on our roads, hurting those who are most vulnerable,” says the ad. “If we don’t act now, it’d be open season on our children. Don’t put their future at risk. Vote no on initiated Measure 27.”

The organization sponsoring the scare mongering, Protecting South Dakota Kids, presented a panoply of negative results they believe legalization would usher in. Representatives for the organization, including its chairman James Kinyon, retired highway patrolman Ed Moses and Kristi "Cricket" Palmer spoke at an event recently.

"Children are not protected with this," Moses said, also expressing concerns about medical marijuana, which was legalized some two years ago. "It can cause a permanent drop in intelligence. It also interferes with the exchange of information between neurons."

A 2020 legalization measure that was green lighted by voters two years ago was struck down by the state Supreme Court.

A statewide poll this summer found that South Dakotans' overall sentiment toward legalizing recreational marijuana has shifted over the past two years, indicating that a referendum on the issue this fall could fail. Matthew Schweich, campaign director for SDBML said that these results don't make sense as they "conflict strongly with previous data that we've seen. When I look a little deeper, I found things that do not make sense to me."
Photo: Courtesy of Kindel Media by Pixabay and Hugo Brizard - YouGoPhoto by Shutterstock // Edited by Benzinga