WeedPress: The Paper Trail

Legislative leaders accepted the committee’s 2026 report on Nov. 10. Accepting a report does not abolish a committee created by state law; repeal would require legislation changing the statutes that create and govern it.

By Jason Karimi, Publisher

PIERRE — The chair of South Dakota’s Medical Marijuana Oversight Committee told legislative leaders Tuesday that the committee should be shut down, after a year in which it made no recommendations.

“I do believe it is time to terminate the actual medicinal marijuana oversight committee,” Rep. Josephine Garcia, R-District 5, told the Legislature’s Executive Board on Nov. 10, according to South Dakota Public Broadcasting’s official audio of the meeting.¹

The Executive Board then voted by voice to accept the committee’s 2026 interim final report. Accepting the report did not abolish the committee. The committee was created by Initiated Measure 26, which voters approved in 2020, and it remains in state law unless it is repealed.¹,³

What happened Tuesday

The 15-member Executive Board heard final reports from interim committees at its Nov. 10 meeting in Room 414 of the Capitol. Garcia presented the oversight committee’s report.⁵

The two-page report says the committee met twice this year, on Aug. 17 and Oct. 13. It summarizes presentations from the Department of Health, the National Conference of State Legislatures, the attorney general’s office, doctors, a presenter on the endocannabinoid system and members of the public. It contains no list of recommendations.²

“The unfortunate thing was at the end of the second meeting, we did not propose any recommendations. As you know this committee is oversight, no power, there’s nothing we can do,” Garcia told the board.¹

Garcia then made her own proposal. “I do believe it is time to terminate the actual medicinal marijuana oversight committee,” she said.¹ She said the committee had met the seven objectives listed in state law, and suggested instead that the departments of Health, Revenue and Agriculture and the tobacco and alcohol industry work together with stakeholders, which she said “might be pharmacists, might be the public, also just mental health.”¹

After the chair asked for questions from online participants, a participant whom the chair did not identify by name asked: “Did the committee as a whole discuss your recommendation and/or discuss making it a committee recommendation?”¹

“No they did not. We made no recommendations during that time… but today I thought I was supposed to bring some recommendations but I was told by LRC we should have voted on that, we did not, so that’s why I’m saying it’s my personal recommendation being the chair,” Garcia said.¹ LRC is the Legislative Research Council.

Rep. Jon Hansen, R-District 25, moved to accept the report, and Sen. Randy Deibert, R-District 31, seconded. The motion passed on a voice vote. At least one “no” can be heard on the recording; the speaker cannot be identified from the audio.¹

Questions during the meeting

The board’s vote was only on accepting the report, but during discussion at least one member questioned whether ending the committee was the right move.

Sen. Tom Pischke, R-District 25, called on by the chair, asked how the Legislature would get recommendations distinguishing South Dakota’s legal medical program from illegal recreational marijuana if the committee were dissolved. He said he believed he had been “the deciding vote on keeping the committee in the Senate,” and he suggested changing the committee’s objectives and membership rather than abolishing it.¹ The Senate roll call on the repeal bill shows 15 senators voting yes and 19 voting no; Pischke voted no. A bill needs 18 votes to pass the 35-member Senate, so the bill would still have failed if any one senator who voted no had voted yes.⁴

Rep. Brian Mulder, R-District 11, said much of the problem lawmakers are hearing about involves products sold outside the medical program, through “pop-up shops, vape shops, whatever it may be,” and that a medical oversight committee is not going to handle that.¹

The same unidentified online participant noted that most of the oversight committee’s members are not legislators, and that there have long been questions and concerns about a legislatively formed committee made up mostly of non-legislators asking legislative staff to work for those members.¹ By law, the committee has two senators, two House members, and seven non-legislators: a physician, a physician assistant, a nurse practitioner, a police chief or designee from a city of more than 50,000 people, a sheriff or designee, a licensed professional or addiction counselor, and a qualifying patient.³

What accepting the report does, and doesn’t, do

State law says the Executive Board “shall appoint” the oversight committee and lists its members. A separate section says the committee “shall meet at least two times per year” to evaluate the medical cannabis program and make recommendations “to the Legislature and the department” on patient access, dispensaries and growers, testing labs, safeguards, rules, research and clinical issues.³

Accepting a final report is not a vote to repeal those sections. The Executive Board’s vote:

• did not end the committee or change its membership;
• did not adopt any recommendation, because the report contains none; and
• did not, on the record WeedPress reviewed, change the medical cannabis program, any Department of Health rule, or the program’s status under federal law.¹,²,³

The report quotes the attorney general’s opinion, posted in the committee’s documents as Official Opinion No. 26-06, which concluded that “South Dakota’s [medical cannabis] program may continue to operate as it has without impact from marijuana’s federal rescheduling to a Schedule III controlled substance. How the program functions in the future will be a policy determination at the discretion of the Legislature or the voters of South Dakota.”²,¹⁵

The repeal bill Garcia opposed

House Bill 1160, sponsored by Rep. Tim Goodwin, R-District 30, would have repealed the three sections that create and govern the committee.⁶

In the House Health and Human Services Committee on Feb. 19, 2026, Garcia voted with the 8-5 majority to defer the bill to the 41st legislative day, a motion that ends a bill’s progress unless it is revived. The next day, the House recalled the bill from committee under Rule 7-7, and the committee reported it without recommendation. On Feb. 23, the House voted 40-27 to place it on the calendar under Joint Rule 6F-6, the procedure often called a “smoke-out,” and then passed it 41-26. Garcia voted no on both floor votes.⁴

In the Senate, the Health and Human Services Committee deferred the bill 4-3 on March 4. The Senate recalled it from committee under Rule 7-7 the next day, the committee reported it without recommendation, and on March 9 the Senate placed it on the calendar under Joint Rule 6F-6 on a 17-17 vote before defeating it 15-19. Sen. John Carley, R-District 29, the oversight committee’s vice chair, and Sen. Lauren Nelson, R-District 18, an oversight committee member, both voted no, as did Executive Board Chair Sen. Chris Karr, R-District 11, and Pischke.⁴,¹⁷

On Tuesday, Garcia said there had been a need to keep the committee going until certain laws were signed, and she cited plans for digital registry cards and other changes sought by sheriffs.¹ The legislative record shows that Senate Bill 90, with Nelson and Garcia listed as prime sponsors, was signed March 30, 2026. It requires the Department of Health to send each cardholder’s and nonresident cardholder’s name, physical address, date of birth and registry identification card number to the state’s prescription drug monitoring program, with an exception to the address requirement for homeless applicants.⁷ A separate bill Garcia sponsored to create a digital registry card, House Bill 1211, was tabled 13-0 in committee on Feb. 17, 2026. Garcia told the board she pulled a digital-card bill after the Department of Health said in a letter that it would do the work. WeedPress did not find such a letter among the documents posted on the Legislature’s website for the Nov. 10 meeting or for the oversight committee.¹,⁸,¹⁶

Less oversight on paper

The committee’s report arrives after another oversight tool expired. Until June 30, 2025, state law required the Department of Health to report annually to the Legislature on applications, cardholders, establishments, violations, expenses and revenues and other program data. The Legislature set that requirement to expire on that date in 2022.⁹ A 2026 bill to require annual reporting on public-health effects of cannabis use, Senate Bill 143, was deferred 6-1 in committee.⁸

Asked by a member of the public in August how the program’s finances would be reported now, the department said that although the statutory annual report “has been sunset,” it “continues to provide medical cannabis expenditure and revenue information along with other program data and updates in the DOH annual report.”¹⁰

The department reported FY2026 program expenditures of $1,554,331.28. Its August presentation listed total revenue of $2,647,333.11, including $84,500 in penalties and fines; its written answers to the committee listed FY2026 fee revenue of $2,562,833, which does not include fines.²,¹⁰,¹¹

The department also told the committee in written answers that “the Office of Medical Cannabis has not received any complaints regarding inability to access safe medical cannabis.”¹⁰

A contrast with 2025

The committee’s 2025 final report listed 11 recommendations, including a cap on THC percentage in medical products, limiting THC products to licensed medical cannabis facilities, giving law enforcement a way to verify cardholders, adding a licensed pharmacist to the committee and creating an interim committee on THC sales at smoke shops.¹²

Several 2026 bills addressed similar subjects, with mixed results. Senate Bill 194, to limit potency at dispensaries, was deferred 6-1. Senate Bill 61, to ban hemp-derived intoxicants not for medical purposes, failed when a motion to place it on the Senate calendar received 14 votes; 19 senators voted no. Senate Bill 95, to require a cardholder to show a card or card number to an officer on request, was withdrawn by its prime sponsor.⁸ Senate Bill 90 became law.⁷

On Tuesday, Garcia also told the board that pharmacists “can be on the committee, should be,” and that “they’re not at the table.” State law requires the committee to seek input from pharmacists, but it does not give pharmacists a seat on the committee.¹,³

What’s next

No future Executive Board or oversight committee meeting was posted on the Legislature’s schedule as of Nov. 10.¹³ The 2027 legislative session begins Jan. 12, 2027. Repealing or restructuring the committee would require legislation.

Disclosure: WeedPress publisher Jason Karimi submitted written materials to the Medical Marijuana Oversight Committee as a member of the public in 2026. The committee’s public documents list three handouts from him.¹⁴