Marijuana activists in South Dakota say they will have ballot measures up for vote to legalize both medicinal and recreational marijuana during the 2018 election.
The move comes after the group New Direction South Dakota failed to get medical marijuana on the ballot this year.
In Colorado, Proposition 64 was passed in 2012 to regulate marijuana much like alcohol. The group New Approach South Dakota is basing their recreational use ballot measure off of that proposition.
Melissa Mentele is the director of New Approach South Dakota. She says marijuana use is already wide spread in South Dakota and enforcement is costing the state $800,000 dollars a year.
Mentele says the group hoped to pass medicinal use first, but consistently ran into the problem of enforcing the law.
“They had issues with regulating it and being able to do their jobs effectively," Mentele says. "So, what we have done in our new recreational bill is, we have designated the money made by taxes for recreational cannabis sales in South Dakota to go into our general education fund for teacher pay and for pay for law enforcement. The rest of it would go to the state as it needs”
Mentele says that could be projects like infrastructure, taxpayer refunds or giving back to native communities. Mentele says she wants recreational use passed for the right reasons.
But Rapid City mayor Steve Allender cautions against the trend of legalizing marijuana for recreational and medical use. Allender is the former police chief for the RCPD.
Allender says he doesn’t see tax revenue from marijuana helping schools and law enforcement any more than video gambling.
“If you listen to the users, they would say there’s never been an overdose, it doesn’t impair your driving, it doesn’t do anything bad, it’s only good, it’s a gift from God… And so on," Allender says. "If you listen to the opposite end of that spectrum you could say it leads to more serious drugs and so on and so forth. All of that really is cheap talk that’s not supported by facts.”
Allender says he hopes more information comes from states that have legalized both recreation and medicinal marijuana.
In 2016, four additional states voted to legalize recreational marijuana. However, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, is vocal against legalizing cannabis.