A South Dakota legislative committee has rejected a bill that would have reversed the state’s voter-approved legalization of medical marijuana. The panel did advance separate legislation however, to remove a legal defense for medical cannabis patients who don’t have registry identification cards.
If enacted, HB 1101, from Rep. Travis Ismay (R), would have repealed South Dakota’s medical cannabis statutes altogether, effectively ending the program. On Tuesday, however, the House Health and Human Services voted 7 to 6 to kill the measure.
Prior to being elected to the legislature last year, Ismay unsuccessfully sought to place an initiative on the 2024 ballot to scrap the state’s medical marijuana law. Now, his bill to do the same has stalled.
Ahead of the vote, the lawmaker told colleagues on Tuesday that there is no difference between medical cannabis and recreational marijuana, saying they are “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 said.
“If you promote something as a medicine and say, ‘there’s no no bad side effects, it’s perfectly harmless,’ kids are
