South Dakota: House Lawmakers Move to Repeal Citizen-Initiated Home Cultivation Rights

A majority of House lawmakers have advanced legislation, HB 1004, to repeal provisions from the state’s voter-approved medical cannabis law that permit qualified patients to home-cultivate personal use quantities of cannabis.

House members decided by a vote of 41 to 29 to advance the legislation to the Senate for further consideration. The vote is simply the latest of many actions taken by lawmakers to undue voters’ actions on Election Day, when they approved a pair of ballot initiatives legalizing marijuana for both medical and adult-use purposes.

“Permitting limited home cultivation permits the ability for patients to have reliable, affordable, and consistent access to the medicine they rely on. South Dakota Senators should uphold the will of the voters, who supported the option for patients to legally grow a botanical product that is objectively safer than the litany of pharmaceutical drugs it could replace,” says Jax James, NORML’s State Policy Manager.

Following a legal challenge spearheaded by Republican Gov. Kristi Noem, justices on the state’s Supreme Court struck down the adult-use legalization measure as unconstitutional. The Governor’s office did not similarly challenge the medical marijuana vote. Nonetheless, lawmakers have made several efforts to weaken the voter-approved measure. Last year, House lawmakers voted to delay the law’s implementation; however, that effort failed when House and Senate lawmakers failed to come to an agreement on conflicting provisions in the bill. Then in September, a Study Committee recommended that legislators move to eliminate language from the law that permits patients to grow up to three marijuana plants. 

NORML is providing an action alert urging Senators to reject HB 1004 and to respect the sanctity of the vote of over 70 percent of South Dakotans here.