South Dakota, It’s Too Darn Wordy! No Weed For You.

A judge in South Dakota has just overturned the recently elected marijuana amendment before the ink was even dry enough to roll a fatty!

South Dakota, you had it! Then ya lost it. Will North Dakota learn from our southern sister?  If we learn anything, it should be Keep It Simple Stoner.

Just because everyone jumps on board behind an initiative doesn't mean you need to include everything in the measure.  North Dakota, let's me and you go back to August of 2020 when I wrote that ND Measure #3 Was One Packed Sausage...it started as a proposal for extending the voting period for those serving in the military and by the time the supporters had it written up it- it was all about redistricting and ethics commissions. By the end of August is was removed from the ballot by the ND Supreme Court.  I can only assume for being an incoherent hunka junk.

South Dakota's recently passed Amendment  A has hit a legal snag because it tried to do it all at one time.  The voters of South Dakota didn't give two hoots about that, because in the summer and fall of 2020- the state was in a full on freedom fest!  Freedom with fireworks at Rushmore!  Freedom with motorcycles at Sturgis!  Freedom with gun-toting Governor Kristi Noem making fun of any mask mandates.

So heck with it, might as well legalize weed!  Done!  With 52% of the vote!  Looked like smoke was coming down the pipe in July of 2021.  The Washington Post reports things got kinda sticky.

But South Dakota’s vote stands out as a particularly extreme shift in state policy. While many other states have slowly taken steps toward legalized marijuana, Amendment A would make it the first state in the country to simultaneously legalize marijuana for medical and recreational uses.

Amendment A sought to make medical marijuana legal and in a recreational way allow residents to grow it, license it, and sell it. Very ambitious.  But so is Governor Noem who'd been against the way this was going down from the start.

As written, the judge said, Amendment A covered taxes, business licensing and hemp cultivation. She added that it also intruded on the powers of state lawmakers and the governor’s office by allowing a state agency to administer recreational marijuana.

Clearly, marijuana is moving forward is a "cash crop" and there's money to be made for the states.  But you need to have the right words for everybody...I suggest North Dakota marijuana supporters just Keep It Simple Stoners.