Marijuana remains illegal in South Dakota and anyone who uses it puts themselves at risk of facing charges.
That’s what one county states attorney says when asked how they’ll handle marijuana charges over the next few months. Voters approved two marijuana measures in Tuesday’s election. Those don’t go into effect until July first of 2021.
Each county may have a different approach to small amount marijuana convictions.
Mark Vargo is the Pennington County State’s Attorney. He says his office will advise law enforcement on how to approach the issue, but they’re taking a wait and see approach.
“We will almost certainly be making some decisions cases and what we think we should do,” Vargo says. “I will tell you that a lot of our marijuana cases enter our diversion programming anyways. This might be, perhaps, less important to us than some counties where they don’t have as active a diversion process.”
Vargo says his staff is running statistics on marijuana related cases.
The measures passed by South Dakota voters regulate and tax small amounts of marijuana.
Brendan Johnson is the president of South Dakotans for Better Marijuana Laws, the group backing Amendment A. He says his hope is cases involving small amounts of marijuana are dismissed.
“So that you don’t have them on people’s permanent criminal record,” Johnson says. “When we’re talking about very large amounts of marijuana, that will continue to be illegal and it should be illegal. So, I don’t worry about those cases. What I do worry about is the thousands of people who—between now and July 1st—who would be in the criminal justice system for a couple grams of marijuana.”
Johnson, who is a former US Attorney for South Dakota, says states attorneys have every right to prosecute under the law. His advice to anyone is to not use marijuana until after July 1, 2021, when the constitutional amendment goes into effect.
Small Amount Marijuana Convictions Could Continue Until July
