South Dakota GOP Lawmaker Seeks To Repeal Voter-Approved Medical Marijuana Law

A South Dakota man who unsuccessfully attempted to repeal the state’s voter-approved medical marijuana law at the ballot last year is taking a different approach in 2025. As a newly elected state lawmaker, conservative activist Travis Ismay is now seeking to end the program legislatively with a new bill he filed.

While Ismay’s citizen initiative didn’t make it to the ballot last November, he was elected to represent South Dakota’s 28B district, and he wasted little time reviving his effort to eliminate the state’s voter-approved medical cannabis law.

On Monday, he filed House Bill 1101, which would repeal the medical marijuana statutes altogether, effectively ending the program. And he was joined by four other members of the GOP-controlled House in hopes of achieving that outcome, including one of the chamber’s majority whips.

While voters approved the law with nearly 70 percent support in 2020, Ismay first tried to reverse the reform as a citizen, filing an initiative that he sought to place on the 2024 ballot. The state attorney general released a final summary of the proposal, but it did not ultimately qualify.

Prior to the election, backers of a separate ballot measure to legalize adult-use cannabis in South Dakota—which voters rejected last November—had called on state officials to scuttle Ismay’s initiative. South Dakotans for Better Marijuana Laws argued that petitions in support of the medical cannabis repeal measure failed to follow state requirements.

Now, with a seat at the table in the legislature, he’s evidently feeling emboldened to take another approach to the proposed repeal.

With respect to adult-use legalization efforts in the state, former Gov. Kristi Noem (R)—who was recently confirmed to lead the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) under the second Trump administration—was among the opponents of the reform proposal. In a video ad released last year, she urged constituents to reject the reform initiative, stating that it’s “not good for our kids” and won’t “improve our communities.”

“The fact is, I’ve never met someone who got smarter from smoking pot,” the former governor said at the time.

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After voters approved medical cannabis legalization in 2020, Noem tried to get the legislature to approve a bill to delay implementation for an additional year. But while it cleared the House, negotiators were unable to reach an agreement with the Senate in conference, delivering a defeat to the governor.

In response, Noem’s office started exploring a compromise, with one proposal that came out of her administration to decriminalize possession of up to one ounce of cannabis, limit the number of plants that patients could cultivate to three and prohibit people under 21 from qualifying for medical marijuana.

In the 2022 legislative session, the House rejected a legalization bill that the Senate had passed, effectively leaving it up to activists to get on the ballot again.

A Marijuana Interim Study Committee, headed by legislative leaders, was established to explore cannabis policy reform, and the panel in November 2021 recommended that the legislature take up legalization. The House-defeated legislation was one of the direct products of that recommendation.