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A coalition of South Dakota House lawmakers on Tuesday agreed to revive a bill to legalize marijuana one day after a committee soundly defeated it, using a legislative maneuver known as a \u201csmoke out\u201d to bring the legislation to the floor.<\/p>\n
The Senate passed SB 3 last week, but it seemed all but certain that it would no longer advance following a defeat in the House State Affairs Committee<\/a> on Monday. Activists didn\u2019t give up the fight, however, and rallied 24 members of the House to bring the issue to the floor despite the committee setback.<\/p>\n BARELY has enough, now he\u2019ll need a few more to calendar it. SB 3 is still alive right now pic.twitter.com\/GxGPGXk6s1<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Austin Goss (@AustinGossSD) March 1, 2022<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n House Speaker Spencer Gosch (R) requested that members wishing to revive the legalization bill stand up. When enough members stood, he quipped that \u201cwe just smoked out a weed bill.\u201d<\/p>\n Senate Bill 3, legal recreational marijuana, was just smoked out on the House floor. Speaker of the House Spencer Gosch said the motion just made the threshold and told the floor “we just smoked out a weed bill.”<\/p>\n \u2014 Eric Mayer (@Mayer2241) March 1, 2022<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n South Dakota voters already approved legalization during the 2020 election, but the reform was\u00a0struck down by the state Supreme Court<\/a>\u00a0following a challenge from the governor\u2019s office. While activists are still holding out hope that the reform can be enacted legislatively, they\u2019re keeping the option open to go to the ballot again this November if lawmakers fail to act.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is an encouraging outcome today,\u201d Matthew Schweich, director of South Dakotans for Better Marijuana Laws (SDBML), told Marijuana Moment. \u201cIt\u2019s clear that members of the South for the House of Representatives are listening to their constituents who are demanding that the will of the people be restored.\u201d<\/p>\n Now, House floor action on the Senate-passed bill is expected to happen on Wednesday, and it would require a simple majority of 36 votes to pass the chamber.<\/p>\n The legislation, sponsored by Sen. Michael Rohl (R), would allow adults 21 and older to purchase and possess up to one ounce of cannabis from licensed retailers.<\/p>\n Home cultivation would not be permitted, however, unlike under a ballot measure that activists have been collecting signatures for.<\/p>\n The state Department of Revenue would be responsible for regulating the adult-use program and promulgating rules related to issues such as transportation and registration.<\/p>\n \u2014 A Marijuana Interim Study Committee, headed by legislative leaders, was established last year to explore the issue, and the panel ultimately recommended that the legislature\u00a0take up legalization this session<\/a>. This legislation was one of the direct products of that recommendation.<\/p>\n Monday\u2019s House committee hearing did deliver a secondary defeat for reform advocates, however. The panel\u00a0axed a separate Senate-passed bill dealing with marijuana penalties and initial rules that would have been put into place if voters approved legalization on the ballot, replacing it with language that advocates view as hostile.<\/p>\n As drafted and passed in the Senate, the licensing provisions of the measure would have made it so only existing business that currently hold liquor licenses would be eligible to enter the marijuana market. That would have included places like gas stations, grocery stores and bars.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n But the language was gutted in committee, replaced the provisions from two separate bills, SB 20 and SB 16.<\/p>\n SB 20<\/a>\u00a0would eliminate certain legal protections for medical cannabis patients under a program that voters approved in 2020, while\u00a0SB 16<\/a>\u00a0would expand police authority to conduct searches and make prosecutions for people who work at licensed medical cannabis facilities. That authority was reserved to regulators under the bill as drafted, and certain members argued that police need to have that ability given the absence of trained investigators in the Department of Health.<\/p>\n Advocates have perviously defeated attempts to advance SB 20 several times this session, but its proponents continue to find new ways to revive its language. Schweich said on Tuesday that activists will fight back against the revised proposal again on the House floor when it is taken up on Friday.<\/p>\n Separately, the House rejected a separate\u00a0bill<\/a>\u00a0last week that would have established a tax policy if recreational marijuana became legal, setting an overall 15 percent tax on cannabis just as was prescribed under the voter-approved 2020 initiative.<\/p>\n Activists viewed that defeat as a setback, but clarified that the measure itself would not have legalized adult-use cannabis. What\u2019s most important, they say, is passing SB 3 to enact the broader reform.<\/p>\n Activists welcome the opportunity to work with the legislature to develop a framework to regulate adult-use marijuana, but they\u2019re also keeping their options open.<\/p>\n SDBML is actively collecting signatures to\u00a0place legalization on the state\u2019s 2022 ballot<\/a>\u00a0as lawmakers navigate the issue.<\/p>\n The campaign\u2019s 2020 success at the ballot was overruled by the state Supreme Court as a result of a legal challenge funded by Gov. Kristi Noem\u2019s (R) administration. The court ruled that the measure violated a single-subject rule for ballot initiatives.<\/p>\n While the House has proved to be a clear obstacle to enacting legalization, Noem represents another barrier. She\u00a0declined to rule out vetoing the legalization legislation<\/a>\u00a0on the day it passed the Senate last week. She also confusingly questioned voter support for the reform despite the fact that they approved it at the polls two years ago.<\/p>\n Noem\u2019s office also recently suggested that the activists behind that voter-approved initiative\u00a0should pay the legal fees of the lawsuit<\/a>\u00a0that invalidated the will of voters\u2014a proposal that the campaign called \u201cridiculous.\u201d<\/p>\n While a recent poll found that most South Dakota voters approve of Noem\u2019s job performance overall,\u00a0just 39 percent approve of her handling of marijuana legalization<\/a>, with 51 percent disapproving. The governor is up for reelection this year.<\/p>\n Noem has consistently faced criticism from advocates and stakeholders over her early opposition to cannabis reform.<\/p>\n She released an ad ahead of last year\u2019s election\u00a0urging residents to vote against the legalization initiative<\/a>\u00a0that ultimately passed, 54-46 percent.<\/p>\n Lately, however, the governor seems committed to associating herself with the implementation of a separate medical cannabis legalization initiative that voters also overwhelmingly approved last year, despite having opposed the proposal in the run-up to the election.<\/p>\n After regulators approved rules for the medical marijuana program in September, Noem said her administration \u201cis fully on board to make certain South Dakota continues to implement the most responsible, patient-focused medical cannabis program in the country.\u201d<\/p>\n Noem tried to get the legislature to\u00a0approve a bill to delay implementation<\/a>\u00a0of the medical cannabis program for an additional year, but while it cleared the House, negotiators were unable to reach an agreement with the Senate in conference, delivering a defeat to the governor.<\/p>\n In response,\u00a0her office started exploring a compromise last year<\/a>, with one proposal that came out of her administration to decriminalize possession of up to one ounce of cannabis, limit the number of plants that patients could cultivate to three and prohibit people under 21 from qualifying for medical marijuana.<\/p>\n Article On Bill Clinton\u2019s CBD Comments Deleted Following Alleged Pressure From Former President\u2019s Team<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<\/div>\n Photo courtesy of Philip Steffan<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n The post South Dakota Lawmakers Revive Marijuana Legalization Bill In \u2018Smoke Out\u2019 Vote A Day After Committee Defeat<\/a> appeared first on Marijuana Moment<\/a>.<\/p>\n
A coalition of South Dakota House lawmakers on Tuesday agreed to revive a bill to legalize marijuana one day after a committee soundly defeated it, using a legislative maneuver known as a \u201csmoke out\u201d to bring the legislation to the floor. The Senate passed SB 3 last week, but itContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":458,"featured_media":53245,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[18,81],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53244"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/458"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53244"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53244\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53246,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53244\/revisions\/53246"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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\nRead More: South Dakota Lawmakers Revive Marijuana Legalization Bill In \u2018Smoke Out\u2019 Vote A Day After Committee Defeat<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"