South Dakota Senators Reject Bills To Repeal Medical Marijuana Program After Federal Rescheduling And Limit THC Potency

South Dakota medical marijuana program survives repeal bid as lawmakers swat down THC potency caps—an object lesson in cannabis policy written in cold committee fluorescents and hotter tempers. The primary takeaway isn’t subtle: voters’ will and patient needs outlasted a pair of bills that would’ve gutted access and micromanaged chemistry. In a brisk, lopsided show of hands, the Senate Health and Human Services Committee rejected an outright repeal tethered to federal rescheduling, 7-0, and a potency clampdown, 6-1. That’s not just parliamentary housekeeping. It’s a statement about the South Dakota medical marijuana program, cannabis taxation anxieties, and how states navigate the onramp to federal change without tossing patients into the ditch.

Rescheduling isn’t a magic wand—so why gamble with patient protections?

One bill aimed to flip the “Open” sign to “Closed” 90 days after the federal government finalizes marijuana’s move under the Controlled Substances Act—a rescheduling push that’s now being pressed from Washington. The text would have erased a voter-approved framework with a stopwatch and a shrug. If you’re a patient, that means pulling the ladder up just as the next level’s being built. South Dakota’s Department of Health opposed the repeal, and the committee agreed—because rescheduling might modernize research access and rules, but it doesn’t instantly deliver nationwide medical cannabis at the pharmacy counter. Infrastructure matters. Licenses matter. Doctors, dispensaries, supply chains, and very real humans managing pain or seizures matter. For anyone who wanted to read the fine print, the repeal language lived in this Senate bill—a bureaucratic guillotine dressed up as policy modernization. Voters backed this program by a wide margin, and roughly 18,000 South Dakotans now rely on it. You don’t torch the kitchen because a new grocery store might open next month. You keep the soup on and adjust the recipe.

Potency caps promise precision—and deliver blunt-force harm

The second bill tried to draw a bright line where biology doesn’t obey: cap oils at 5 percent THC and liquid concentrates at 60 percent. Nice, clean numbers. Trouble is, pain doesn’t clock in at 5 percent, epilepsy doesn’t consult a chart, and tolerance, metabolism, and dosing needs vary widely. Patients and advocates argued the cap wasn’t grounded in clinical evidence about what actually works; the committee’s 6-1 vote reflected that reality. For those tracking the details, the cap scheme was housed in this separate bill. If you want a snapshot of why it fell flat, look at the ledger:

• Repeal vote: 7-0 against.
• Potency cap vote: 6-1 against.
• Patients affected: about 18,000.
• State context: 40 states now run medical cannabis programs; none have repealed theirs on the promise of federal rescheduling.

Policy built on tidy numbers can miss the messier truth: dosage is personal, and relief is a spectrum, not a setting.

A pattern emerges: guardrails, not whiplash

Zoom out and the film grain sharpens. Weeks earlier, senators declined to entertain a separate bid to ban intoxicating hemp cannabinoids and kratom. House members also pumped the brakes on letting terminally ill patients use cannabis in hospitals and hospices—a harsh call that shows how fragmented “medical access” can look once you cross the sidewalk into a clinical setting. Meanwhile, another attempt to rewind the voter-approved program fizzled around this time last year. It’s all part of a regional and national mosaic where states wrestle with cannabis policy reform in fits and starts—some carving out medical pathways, others tinkering with enforcement or harm reduction. Neighboring debates illustrate the sprawl: Ohio’s grassroots are pushing back through a referendum drive—see Ohio Activists Launch Signature Drive For Referendum To Block Marijuana And Hemp Restrictions. In Virginia, lawmakers are probing the edges of clinical access with bills opening hospital doors a crack for certain patients—context in Virginia Lawmakers Approve Bills To Expand Medical Marijuana Access In Hospitals. And in Wisconsin, a modest decriminalization push speaks to shifting norms even in holdout jurisdictions—more in Bipartisan Wisconsin Lawmakers Circulate Bill To Decriminalize Marijuana.

Federal friction points: commerce, borders, and the gray zones in between

To understand why South Dakota’s committee balked at a self-destruct clause, follow the frictions. Even as rescheduling inches forward, the day-to-day remains a patchwork: banking headaches, tax oddities, and the absurdity of state-legal goods turning contraband the second they flirt with federal jurisdiction. A recent federal court fight underscored that tension when a judge dismissed a challenge over U.S. Customs and Border Protection seizures of state-legal products—a stark reminder that the federal-state dance is still clumsy, sometimes punitive. For the wonks keeping score, the case contours are summarized here: Federal Judge Dismisses Marijuana Businesses’ Lawsuit Challenging CBP Seizures Of State-Legal Products. Against that backdrop, hinging a program’s survival on federal timelines isn’t prudence. It’s negligence. Patients don’t live in policy drafts; they live in bodies that hurt at 2 a.m. That’s when the lofty talk of “harmonization” melts into a simple binary: do you have access, or don’t you?

In the end, South Dakota’s committee did something refreshingly unglamorous: it protected stability. No grandstanding victory laps. Just a refusal to make pawns of patients while Washington shuffles its paperwork and lobbyists haggle over acronyms. The votes weren’t close because, for once, the story wasn’t complicated. Keep the program running. Don’t impose arbitrary potency ceilings. Let science and clinical practice, not fear and folklore, set the dose. If you want reform, build it in daylight and own the tradeoffs. And if you’re looking to explore compliant options born from that same pragmatic mindset, take a quiet stroll through our shop at thcaorder.com/shop.