South Dakota’s governor says he wants to fight methamphetamine by punishing bad behavior and reinforcing the good.
Governor Dennis Daugaard says he wants to offer incentives to beat addiction. He says he supports allowing offenders who complete court-ordered treatment in a year one opportunity to reduce a felony to a misdemeanor. Daugaard says he also supports mandatory jail time for people on probation or parole who fail drug tests.
"South Dakota is seeing a big increase in meth-related arrests and convictions," Daugaard says. "For the most part, meth is no longer being manufactured in homegrown laboratories; it is being produced on an industrial scale and being trafficking into South Dakota from outside our state."
Daugaard says he and the state’s attorney general want an additional task force to combat trafficking. That panel includes four new highway patrol officers who would work with agents of the state’s Division of Criminal Investigation. The governor proposes using money from the highway fund to support those new troopers.