WeedPress: The Paper Trail

The public can read Kevin Sabet’s posted testimony and prepared remarks to South Dakota’s Medical Marijuana Oversight Committee. The Legislative Research Council says state open-records law lets it deny requests for records about how he and other outside speakers were selected, invited or coordinated, records its response calls “nonpublic.”

By Jason Karimi, WeedPress

Disclosure: The author filed the records request described in this article. He also submitted written handouts and comments to the Medical Marijuana Oversight Committee for its Oct. 13, 2026, meeting, including comments responding to two of the presenters discussed here. WeedPress covers the cannabis industry. This article reports the Legislative Research Council’s stated legal basis from its written response; WeedPress did not send follow-up questions to the LRC or committee members before this article was prepared.

On Oct. 13, South Dakota’s Medical Marijuana Oversight Committee gave agenda slots to three outside presenters whose materials or remarks that day addressed marijuana’s risks, federal rescheduling or tighter medical-marijuana rules: Bertha Madras, a professor of psychobiology in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard University Medical School, at 10:30 a.m.; Kevin Sabet, president and CEO of Smart Approaches to Marijuana, which he describes as “the leading non-profit fighting against the commercialization of marijuana,” at 11 a.m.; and Dr. Kenneth Finn, a board member of the International Academy on the Science and Impacts of Cannabis, at 12:30 p.m. Other slots that day went to the Attorney General’s Office, the Department of Health and Jeremy Barthels of Northwestern Health Sciences University.¹² South Dakota Searchlight reported that the Harvard professor and the Colorado doctor on the program had opposed the federal government’s recent downgrading of medical marijuana to a less dangerous class of drugs.³ According to the SDPB recording, Madras framed her talk around what she called fallacies about medical marijuana and told the committee she had testified against federal rescheduling.⁴ The public file does not say who selected or invited the outside presenters, or how.

On Oct. 26, the Legislative Research Council, the Legislature’s staff office, told WeedPress that state law allows it to withhold records responsive to requests on that subject. In a written response to a public-records request, LRC Director Pro Tem Doug Decker denied requests for communications between committee members or assigned LRC staff and outside individuals or organizations, communications involving Sabet, SAM and Madras, and records documenting the selection, invitation or coordination of outside speakers. He cited the open-records law’s exemptions for officials’ correspondence and for information agencies receive that is not required to be filed with them.⁵

WeedPress is not alleging that anyone broke the law. The LRC cited specific statutes for each denial, and the exemptions it cited are broadly worded. That is the point of this story: the public can read much of what the speakers said, but under the law as the LRC reads it, records responsive to requests about how the speakers came to be there do not have to be released.

Why the speaker list matters

Voters approved creation of the oversight committee in 2020 through Initiated Measure 26, the same measure that legalized medical cannabis. State law directs the committee to evaluate patient access, dispensaries and cultivation facilities, testing labs and the program’s safeguards, to make recommendations to the Legislature and the Department of Health, and to “seek[] relevant input from qualifying patients; designated caregivers; pharmacists; school boards and administrators; parents; municipal representatives; state agencies . . . and medical cannabis establishments.”⁶ The Executive Board of the Legislative Research Council, a panel of legislators, appoints its members.⁷⁸

Who gets a 30-minute agenda slot, and who gets a few minutes during public comment, shapes what the committee hears before it makes recommendations. On Oct. 13 the agenda allotted 30 minutes each to Madras, Sabet, Barthels and Finn, or 90 minutes for Madras, Sabet and Finn together, and 30 minutes for public comment from everyone else.¹ Sabet’s posted script lists his own time as a “30-minute block (about 20 minutes of remarks, about 10 minutes of member questions).”² The agenda times were approximate. Based on the timestamps of the SDPB recording, public comment ultimately ran well past its scheduled half hour, roughly 73 minutes.⁴

The panel’s makeup has also changed. The committee Initiated Measure 26 created included three qualifying patients. During the 2023 session, the Legislature reconfigured it to four legislators, three medical professionals, two law-enforcement representatives, one professional or addiction counselor and one qualifying patient, according to the committee’s 2023 final report.⁹

What WeedPress asked for

On Oct. 19, WeedPress asked the LRC for four categories of records covering Oct. 19, 2021, through Oct. 19, 2026:⁵

1. All communications between committee members or assigned LRC staff and outside individuals or organizations about the committee’s official business.
2. Communications involving Kevin Sabet, Smart Approaches to Marijuana or Bertha Madras about committee business, including speaker invitations, scheduling and coordination.
3. Meeting materials, testimony, presentations, memoranda, handouts and calendar invitations distributed to members.
4. Records documenting the selection, invitation or coordination of outside speakers or organizations, to the extent such records are maintained and subject to disclosure.

The request acknowledged the law’s exemptions for correspondence and working papers and asked the LRC, if it withheld records, to identify the categories withheld and release any nonexempt portions.⁵

What the LRC said, and the law it relied on

Decker’s response, sent Oct. 26, addressed each item:⁵

• Item 1, denied. The communications “are nonpublic records under SDCL 1-27-1.5(12) as they are ‘correspondence . . . of public officials or employees.’”
• Item 2, denied. The same correspondence exemption applies, Decker wrote, and the request “speaks to ‘information received by agencies, which are not required to be filed with the agencies,’” which he said is nonpublic under SDCL 1-27-1.5(24).
• Item 3, denied in part. Materials and memoranda LRC staff produced for members’ internal use are deliberative documents under SDCL 1-27-1.9 and staff-member correspondence under subsection (12), the letter said, and calendar invitations fall under subsection (12)’s exemption for “calendars or logs of appointments.” For everything else, the LRC pointed to its website and listed links to committee documents, minutes and final reports for 2022 through 2025, and to 2026 documents and minutes; it said the 2026 final report would be presented to the Executive Board on Nov. 10.
• Item 4, denied. Records of “the selection, invitation, or coordination of outside speakers” are “nonpublic correspondence” under subsection (12) and information “not required to be filed with the [LRC]” under subsection (24).

The cited statutes contain the language on which the LRC relied. Subsection (12) exempts “[c]orrespondence, memoranda, calendars or logs of appointments, working papers, and records of telephone calls of public officials or employees.” Subsection (24) exempts “[i]nternal agency records or information received by agencies, which are not required to be filed with the agencies,” if the information is not otherwise public under state law and if the records are not final statistical or factual tabulations, final instructions to staff that affect the public, final agency policy or determinations, or a completed state or federal audit.¹⁰ Section 1-27-1.9 provides that no official “may be compelled to provide” documents used in the “decisional or deliberative process,” while adding that a document “otherwise already public is not made confidential by reason of having been used in deliberations.”¹¹

The response did not include a record-by-record index or count of withheld records, and it did not identify specific withheld records, though the request had asked the LRC to identify the categories withheld “if possible.” It also did not say whether responsive records exist for particular items. The LRC sent a correction 10 minutes later fixing a mislabeled link to the 2024 final report.⁵

One more legal point matters here. At least in the setting the South Dakota Supreme Court has addressed, an exemption did not necessarily require a custodian to withhold a record. In Pyle v. South Dakota Division of Criminal Investigation, decided Sept. 30, the South Dakota Supreme Court described its 2015 decision in Mercer v. South Dakota Attorney General Office as recognizing that although the records sought there were exempt from public disclosure requirements, the custodian “nevertheless has discretion under SDCL 1-27-37 to disclose them.”¹² Neither case involved the Legislature or the LRC. Whether and how that principle applies to legislative records has not been decided.

What is public

Many committee records are posted on the LRC website, as the LRC’s response said. The committee’s 2026 hearing documents include Sabet’s full written testimony and spoken remarks, Finn’s slides, an Americans for Safe Access presentation, Department of Health responses, guest registers, and handouts from members of the public, including two from the author.¹³

Sabet’s posted testimony opens by thanking “Chair Garcia, Vice Chair Carley, and members of the committee” for “the invitation to submit this testimony and to appear on October 13.” It does not say who issued the invitation.¹⁴ SAM publicly announced his testimony that morning and said he would appear remotely.¹⁵

His posted spoken-remarks file also includes preparation notes. It ends with a section headed “ANTICIPATED QUESTIONS (PREP NOTES, NOT FOR READING ALOUD).” The notes say to “[e]xpect at least one question framing SAM as trying to end the program,” to “[k]eep answers on the litigation factual; SAM is a party (check with counsel beforehand on how much to say),” and to “[d]efer clinical detail to Dr. Madras and Dr. Finn.”² The notes indicate that Sabet expected to appear on the same program as Madras and Finn. They do not say who arranged the lineup. In his written testimony, Sabet disclosed that SAM is among the petitioners challenging the April 2026 federal rescheduling order in the D.C. Circuit.¹⁴

For fairness: several of Sabet’s recommendations, including a THC potency cap, stronger patient-provider relationships and mandatory reporting of hospitalization and poison-control data, track recommendations the committee had already adopted at its Nov. 4, 2025, meeting, before he appeared.¹⁶ The records do not show that his testimony produced any committee action. According to the SDPB recording, the Oct. 13 meeting ended without a vote on recommendations.⁴

What is not public

Beyond the requested records the LRC refused to release, the public file has gaps:

• No Madras document. As of Oct. 26, none of the posted 2026 hearing documents was from Madras. Her presentation is preserved on the SDPB audio recording.⁴¹³
• No Oct. 13 minutes yet. Official minutes for the Oct. 13 meeting had not been posted as of Oct. 26.¹³
• No record of who chose the speakers. No posted agenda or minutes from 2022 through 2026, and no posted final report from 2022 through 2025, says who selected or invited any outside presenter.¹³
• The author’s Oct. 13 written comments. The author emailed written comments to LRC staff on Oct. 13 and asked that they be filed for the record. As of Oct. 26 they did not appear among the posted hearing documents, though the guest register lists him as presenting written testimony. His two Oct. 1 handouts are posted.¹³¹⁷

Complaints about speaker choices

Industry advocates have objected to the committee’s speaker choices before. At the Oct. 13 meeting, Ned Horsted of 605 Cannabis told the committee, as quoted by South Dakota Searchlight, “You’ve done quite the job once again in stacking the committee with anti-cannabis individuals from out of state.”³ That is his characterization; WeedPress has not found a public record showing how the agenda was built, which is the subject of the records WeedPress requested.

Committee Chair Rep. Josephine Garcia, R-Watertown, defended the committee’s work. Searchlight reported that she said the committee has “done a very good job” meeting what state law requires of it, and that attendees, “whether they’re from here or not,” have helped it meet its goals. Garcia and Vice Chair Sen. John Carley, R-Piedmont, both lost their June primaries, Searchlight reported.³

The meeting also produced a dispute over time. According to the SDPB recording, Garcia asked Steph Sherer of Americans for Safe Access to wrap up during public comment and allowed her two more minutes. Committee member Kasey Entwisle, the panel’s patient representative, objected on the record that Sherer had been cut off at six minutes. Garcia responded that Sherer had spoken for about nine and a half minutes and that the chair had discretion. Garcia initially declined to allow Entwisle’s follow-up question, then allowed it.⁴

Earlier agendas show a shift in agenda-listed presenters. At its Oct. 22, 2025, meeting, the committee’s formal agenda included five presenters focused on health risks and one item from a dispensary on inspections, while other industry and patient voices spoke during public comment.¹⁸ From 2023 through August 2025, the committee’s agendas had included formal agenda slots for representatives of the medical cannabis industry.¹⁹

The vice chair’s bill to narrow the exemption

The exemption the LRC relied on most heavily drew a challenge from inside the committee earlier this year. Carley sponsored Senate Bill 94 in the 2026 session. It would have limited subsection (12) to correspondence and similar records “which are not maintained, stored, or retained by a public body on a publicly owned, operated, or controlled system.”²⁰

“Since the people are our bosses, and pay for our work, and own our work product, they should be able to check up on what we’re doing,” Carley told Senate State Affairs, according to the South Dakota Broadcasters Association. Opponents included the governor’s office, whose Katie Hruska called it “a massive expansion of bureaucracy,” and the South Dakota Retailers Association, whose Bill Van Camp warned of a “chilling effect” on communication between businesses and government.²¹

Senate State Affairs deferred the bill to the 41st legislative day, effectively killing it, on an 8-1 vote on Feb. 9. Sen. Tom Pischke cast the lone vote against deferral. Sen. Chris Karr, identified in a June LRC notice as chair of the Legislature’s Executive Board, voted with the majority.²²⁸ The same notice listed Pischke as a board member.⁸

What happens next

The Executive Board of the Legislative Research Council, which appoints the oversight committee, is scheduled to receive the committee’s 2026 final report at its Nov. 10 meeting, according to the LRC’s response.⁵ A June LRC notice for an earlier board meeting said people wishing to testify before the board should register electronically.⁸

State law also gives requesters a way to contest a denial. Under SDCL 1-27-38, a requester whose written request is denied may, within 90 days of the denial, file a civil action or a written notice of review with the Office of Hearing Examiners.²³ Whether that office can review a denial by the Legislature’s own staff is an open question. The Office of Hearing Examiners is attached to the Bureau of Human Resources and Administration for reporting and budgetary purposes, and appeals from its decisions go to circuit court under SDCL chapter 1-26, the state’s administrative-procedure law, whose definition of “agency” excludes the Legislature.²⁴ The statutes cited here do not resolve that question. In such a proceeding, SDCL 1-27-41 says no document or record may be publicly released until a final decision or judgment orders its release.²³

The LRC’s position is that the requested records are “nonpublic” under the exemptions it cited and need not be released. Pyle describes a custodian’s discretion to release exempt records in a case that did not involve the Legislature, and whether that principle applies to LRC records is unresolved. For now, the records WeedPress sought on how the committee’s outside speakers were chosen remain unreleased.

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Notes

1. S.D. Legis. Rsch. Council, Medical Marijuana Oversight Committee Agenda (Oct. 13, 2026), https://mylrc.sdlegislature.gov/api/Documents/307903.pdf.
2. Kevin A. Sabet, Spoken Remarks, S.D. Medical Marijuana Oversight Comm., at 1, 9–10 (Oct. 13, 2026), https://mylrc.sdlegislature.gov/api/Documents/308387.pdf.
3. Meghan O’Brien, Medical Marijuana Oversight Committee Clashes with Industry Advocates Again over Critical Speakers, S.D. Searchlight (Oct. 13, 2026), https://southdakotasearchlight.com/2026/10/13/medical-marijuana-oversight-committee-clashes-with-industry-advocates-again-over-critical-speakers/.
4. S.D. Pub. Broad., Medical Marijuana Oversight Committee (Oct. 13, 2026) (audio recording), https://sdpb.sd.gov/sdpbpodcast/2026/interim/mmo10132026.mp3. Descriptions of the meeting are paraphrased from the recording; times are approximate. Official minutes had not been posted as of Oct. 26, 2026.
5. Email from Doug Decker, Dir. Pro Tem, S.D. Legis. Rsch. Council, to Jason Karimi, WeedPress (Oct. 26, 2026, 2:20 p.m. CT) (responding to public records request of Oct. 19, 2026, and quoting it), and follow-up email (Oct. 26, 2026, 2:30 p.m. CT) (correcting 2024 final report link) (on file with WeedPress).
6. S.D. Codified Laws § 34-20G-93, https://sdlegislature.gov/Statutes/34-20G-93.
7. Id. § 34-20G-92, https://sdlegislature.gov/Statutes/34-20G-92.
8. Press Release, S.D. Legis. Rsch. Council, Legislative Executive Board to Meet (June 10, 2026), https://mylrc.sdlegislature.gov/api/Documents/306907.pdf.
9. S.D. Legis. Rsch. Council, 2023 Interim Final Reports, Medical Marijuana Oversight Comm., at 16 (PDF p. 18), https://mylrc.sdlegislature.gov/api/Documents/AnnualReport/256913.pdf.
10. S.D. Codified Laws § 1-27-1.5(12), (24), https://sdlegislature.gov/Statutes/1-27-1.5.
11. Id. § 1-27-1.9, https://sdlegislature.gov/Statutes/1-27-1.9.
12. Pyle v. S.D. Div. of Crim. Investigation, 2026 S.D. 51, ¶ 18 (describing Mercer v. S.D. Att’y Gen. Off., 2015 S.D. 31, ¶ 21, 864 N.W.2d 299, 305), https://ujs.sd.gov/media/tqenfnpv/31092.pdf.
13. S.D. Legis. Rsch. Council, Medical Marijuana Oversight Committee, 2026 Interim: Hearing Documents, https://sdlegislature.gov/Interim/Committee/501/HearingDocuments, and Minutes, https://sdlegislature.gov/Interim/Committee/501/Minutes (both viewed Oct. 26, 2026); see, e.g., Kenneth Finn, Presentation (Oct. 13, 2026), https://mylrc.sdlegislature.gov/api/Documents/308402.pptx; Americans for Safe Access, Medical Cannabis Presentation (Oct. 13, 2026), https://mylrc.sdlegislature.gov/api/Documents/308407.pdf; S.D. Dep’t of Health, Response to MMOC Questions (Aug. 24, 2026), https://mylrc.sdlegislature.gov/api/Documents/308372.pdf; Guest Register, at 1 (Oct. 13, 2026), https://mylrc.sdlegislature.gov/api/Documents/308565.pdf. Earlier years’ documents are linked from the committee pages for 2022 (467), 2023 (470), 2024 (481) and 2025 (491) at sdlegislature.gov.
14. Written Testimony of Kevin A. Sabet, S.D. Medical Marijuana Oversight Comm., at 1–2 (Oct. 13, 2026), https://mylrc.sdlegislature.gov/api/Documents/308388.pdf.
15. Press Release, Smart Approaches to Marijuana, Kevin Sabet to South Dakota Lawmakers: Don’t Let Medical Marijuana Become Recreational (Oct. 13, 2026), https://learnaboutsam.org/2026/10/kevin-sabet-to-south-dakota-lawmakers-dont-let-medical-marijuana-become-recreational/.
16. S.D. Legis. Rsch. Council, Medical Marijuana Oversight Committee Minutes, at 2–4 (Nov. 4, 2025), https://mylrc.sdlegislature.gov/api/Documents/287684.pdf; S.D. Legis. Rsch. Council, 2025 Interim Final Reports, at 58–59, https://mylrc.sdlegislature.gov/api/Documents/AnnualReport/289848.pdf.
17. Jason Karimi, Handout 1 and Handout 2 (filed Oct. 1, 2026), https://mylrc.sdlegislature.gov/api/Documents/308176.pdf, https://mylrc.sdlegislature.gov/api/Documents/308177.pdf; Email from Jason Karimi to LRC staff (Oct. 13, 2026, 12:21 p.m. CT) (on file with WeedPress).
18. S.D. Legis. Rsch. Council, Medical Marijuana Oversight Committee Agenda (Oct. 22, 2025), https://mylrc.sdlegislature.gov/api/Documents/286572.pdf; Minutes, at 1–2 (Oct. 22, 2025), https://mylrc.sdlegislature.gov/api/Documents/287309.pdf.
19. See, e.g., S.D. Legis. Rsch. Council, Medical Marijuana Oversight Committee Agenda (Aug. 21, 2023), https://mylrc.sdlegislature.gov/api/Documents/251886.pdf; Agenda (Aug. 19, 2024), https://mylrc.sdlegislature.gov/api/Documents/267816.pdf; Agenda (Aug. 19, 2025), https://mylrc.sdlegislature.gov/api/Documents/285057.pdf.
20. S.B. 94, 101st Leg. Sess., § 1 (S.D. 2026) (as introduced), https://sdlegislature.gov/Session/Bill/26968.
21. Todd Epp, Senate Panel Kills Bill Narrowing Open Records Exemption for Government Emails, S.D. Broadcasters Ass’n (Feb. 9, 2026), https://www.kdsj980.com/2026/02/09/senate-panel-kills-bill-narrowing-open-records-exemption-for-government-emails/.
22. S.D. Senate State Affairs Comm., Minutes (Feb. 9, 2026), https://mylrc.sdlegislature.gov/api/Documents/Minutes/300605.pdf?Year=2026; S.D. Legislature, Vote 83449, https://sdlegislature.gov/Session/Vote/83449.
23. S.D. Codified Laws §§ 1-27-38, 1-27-41, https://sdlegislature.gov/Statutes/1-27-38, https://sdlegislature.gov/Statutes/1-27-41.
24. Id. §§ 1-26D-1, 1-26-1(1), https://sdlegislature.gov/Statutes/1-26D-1, https://sdlegislature.gov/Statutes/1-26-1.