South Dakota’s governor signs handful of medical cannabis bills into law

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem last week signed a series of bills addressing the state’s fledgling medicinal cannabis program, which voters approved when they voted in 2020.

Noem’s office said Friday that the first-term Republican had “signed six medical cannabis and hemp bills into law” and that implementation of those measures “will be part of Governor Noem’s focus on implementing a safe and responsible medical cannabis program that is most patient.” is -focused on the land.”

Perhaps most notable is that one of the bills Noem signed into law limits the number of cannabis plants a patient can grow in his or her home to four — two of which “can be the growth state in which they produce marijuana buds, while the other two plants cannot progress past the seedling stage,” according to the Argus Leader newspaper.

As the Associated Press noted, the “bill passed by voters did not put a cap on the number of plants that could be grown in patients’ homes, but lawmakers this year decided to limit the number to four: two flowering.” and two non-flowering,” a compromise that came about “after the Republican-controlled House of Representatives proposed a total ban on home-grown cannabis and Senate Republicans pushed through a cap of six plants.”

Another bill signed by Noem, according to Argus Leader, “amends the medical marijuana law to allow nursing homes, treatment centers and mental health centers to implement restrictions on cannabis use in their facilities” by protecting such facilities “from being used for storage and… administering medicinal cannabis to clients and patients,” while another measure set to become law “adds language to the Medical Marijuana Act requiring that the Department of Health provide written notification when a previously issued medical ID card is used Marijuana recants.”

South Dakota lawmakers have spent much of this year’s legislative session debating the state’s approach to cannabis. Noem’s office said on Friday that along with the six bills signed last week, the governor had “previously signed 18 additional medical cannabis bills during the 2022 legislative session.”

Voters there approved two proposals in the 2020 vote that legalized both medical and recreational marijuana use by adults. But Noem, after vocally opposing the recreational measure throughout the campaign, almost immediately brought a legal action against the adult-use program.

A state lower court sided with Noem last February, saying the recreational cannabis proposal actually violated the state’s call for constitutional amendments. In November, the state Supreme Court upheld that ruling, a result Noem celebrated.

“South Dakota is a place where the rule of law and our Constitution matter, and that’s what today’s decision is about,” Noem said in a statement at the time. “We do things right – and how we do things is just as important as what we do. We are still subject to the rule of law. This decision does not affect my government’s implementation of the medical cannabis program, which was approved by voters in 2020. This program launched earlier this month and the first cards have already been mailed to eligible South Dakotans.”

Activists across the state have made renewed efforts to put another recreational cannabis measure on this year’s vote, an effort that prompted some South Dakota lawmakers to pass their own legalization measure in this session. The law passed with a single vote in the state Senate last month, but the proposal failed to garner sufficient support from lawmakers in the state House of Representatives.