South Dakotans,
I’m urging you to vote YES on the South Dakota Safe Access Act, also known as Initiated Measure 13, which will regulate the medical use of marijuana.
In 2006, your state became the only one to fail to pass a medical marijuana initiative. The vote was close, but the fear tactics used by opponents led many of you to doubt your compassionate nature, thus cruelly depriving your fellow South Dakotans the relief from illness and disability that medical marijuana is proven to provide
This is not a bill to turn South Dakota into Venice Beach, California. Opponents often use scaremongering about California’s medical marijuana laws, which are famously lax, to convince the casual voter that support for medical marijuana will lead to some sort of stoner paradise. That simply isn’t true about the South Dakota Safe Access Act.
South Dakotans who wish to use medical marijuana will face strict scrutiny of their medical records for qualification under a limited set of conditions, including cancer, glaucoma, HIV/AIDS, Lou Gehrig’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, wasting syndrome, severe nausea, epilepsy and seizure disorders, multiple sclerosis, Crohn’s disease, and other spastic disorders.
Severe pain, which critics often deride as the easy way to get a card, is even more scrutinized than it is in the other medical marijuana states. Only those whose pain is intractable and unresponsive to conventional treatments for six months or longer will qualify.
The initiative is also written to curtail the explosive growth of medical marijuana found in a few of the existing medical marijuana states. The program only allows South Dakota residents to be caregivers for medical marijuana patients and they may not have crimes of violence or felony drug dealing in their background check. A caregiver may only tend to up to five patients, eliminating the potential for “caregiver dispensaries” found in other states. In fact, dispensaries, collectives, and cooperatives are specifically forbidden by the Act.
Patients in the South Dakota program would also be limited to just one ounce of marijuana possession and the cultivation of up to six plants, which would place South Dakota among the medical marijuana states with the most stringent restrictions.
South Dakota’s sick and disabled medical marijuana patients will also benefit from lessons learned from other medical marijuana states. Patients in need of organ transplants won’t be given a death sentence by denying them a transplant due to their legal medical marijuana use. Patients won’t be evicted from their housing or fired from their jobs solely for using marijuana as medicine; however, employers can still maintain drug-free workplaces and forbid patients from using medical marijuana on the job or in any way that causes impairment on the job.
Please vote YES on Initiated Measure 13 – the next person who could ease their suffering and treat their conditions with medical marijuana could be you or someone you love. Nobody deserves prison time for using safe, effective, non-toxic herbal medicine. Thank you.
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