These Are The Most And Least Cannabis-Friendly Legislators In South Dakota

Today, South Dakota’s leading cannabis organizations released the 2022 South Dakota Legislature Cannabis Scorecard, which analyzes 68 votes on significant cannabis bills during the 2022 legislative session in Pierre and assigns each legislator a grade based on their voting record.

The Cannabis Industry Association of South Dakota, New Approach South Dakota, and South Dakotans for Better Marijuana Laws produced the scorecard in order to educate the public on how their elected officials voted on cannabis policy during the legislative session this year.

“During the 2022 legislative session, there were a large number of votes on cannabis-related legislation and our Scorecard is intended to put all of that information in one place,” said Matthew Schweich, campaign director for South Dakotans for Better Marijuana Laws, which led the 2020 campaign that passed Amendment A and Measure 26. “Our analysis will allow South Dakota voters to quickly and easily evaluate how their elected officials voted on cannabis bills this year.”

The Scorecard assigns grades based on 68 votes, including both floor and committee votes. Each vote is assigned an “Impact Score” based on the degree to which that legislation would advance or harm cannabis reform efforts in South Dakota.

“For the past two sessions, cannabis reform advocates have successfully defeated a significant number of bills that would have adversely affected patients and providers of medical cannabis who rely on Measure 26, the medical cannabis law approved by voters in 2020,” said Melissa Mentele, executive director of New Approach South Dakota, the state’s long-standing grassroots cannabis reform organization that played an important role in the 2020 campaign, and the author of Measure 26. “Despite overwhelming public support for medical cannabis, there are still many legislators in Pierre who are committed to rejecting the will of the people on this issue. Given the political climate, we think that accountability is very important.”

The Scorecard includes votes on recreational cannabis legalization in addition to medical cannabis policy.

“This year, we came closer than ever before to passing a recreational cannabis law through the South Dakota Legislature,” said Ned Horsted, executive director of the Cannabis Industry Association of South Dakota, the state’s leading association for cannabis businesses. “The South Dakota Senate is one of the most conservative legislative chambers in the country to approve recreational cannabis legalization in modern times, so the passage of SB 3 was a major achievement. Our Scorecard will let South Dakota voters know who stood with them and who did not when they go to the polls on June 7 for the primary election and November 8 for the general election.”

The groups pointed to a number of major successes during the 2022 legislative session. Cannabis reform advocates defeated bills that would have: repealed the affirmative defense for medical cannabis patients; repealed home cultivation by cannabis patients; outlawed medical cannabis edibles; and enabled local governments to completely ban all medical cannabis businesses.

Advocates also pointed to the passage of SB 26 as an important victory. This legislation will improve access to medical cannabis cards by allowing physician assistants and advanced practice registered nurses (in addition to doctors) to write medical cannabis recommendations for qualifying patients.

“This Scorecard is not intended to simply award our allies and punish our opponents,” said Schweich. “It’s an honest and qualitative analysis of this legislative session. Most voters do not have hours to spare to search through the South Dakota Legislature’s website and track down each floor and committee vote and determine how their State Senator and State Representatives approached cannabis. So we did that work for the public with this Scorecard.”

The Scorecard is available here.