Out-of-Staters Bring Anti-Pot Warnings to Medical Oversight Committee

Someone arranged for four out-of-state witnesses to spend three hours yesterday telling the Legislature’s interim committee on medical marijuana how bad medical marijuana is. Pot advocate Emmett Reistroffer smells conspiracy:

Reistroffer also said he fears the committee is involved in a coordinated effort to restrict or repeal the state’s medical marijuana program, which voters approved in 2020 and the state implemented in 2022. There are currently 16,477 patient cards issued in the state [Joshua Haiar, “Oversight Committee Testimony Sends ‘Shock Wave’ Through SD Medical Marijuana Industry,” South Dakota Searchlight, 2025.10.22].

Sharp-tongued committee chair and rookie Representative Josephine Garcia (R-5/Watertown) said she did no such thing:

“There has been no intention at all for any agenda this meeting, other than to follow what was not done when this program was first rolled out,” Garcia said. “That was my only intention here. If you’re insinuating that me, as the chair, have said something or orchestrated something, I have not done that. It is awareness for the public. This is a public safety issue” [Haiar, 2025.10.22].

Of course, Rep. Garcia thinks Jon Hansen has “incredible insight“, so take anything she says with a big grain of salt. Four folks from Oklahoma, Colorado, and Missouri don’t just show up in Pierre, South Dakota, to cry the dangers of prescription demon weed. And these four didn’t have to squeeze into the 45-minute public comment period as Reistroffer and other interested citizens had to; they each got 45-minute blocks of their own on the agenda. No proponents of medical marijuana were given places on the agenda. That imbalance didn’t happen by chance: the chair is usually responsible for the agenda, and Wednesday’s agenda was clearly orchestrated against medical marijuana.

Top lobbyist Jeremiah Murphy earned his pay for the day with this apt dismissal of all that out-of-state testimony:

Jeremiah Murphy, who lobbies for the medical marijuana industry, told committee members during the public comment period that they should take pride in the state’s program.

“If you think about what you heard today, they hardly landed a punch on the South Dakota program,” he said. “They showed you real, significant problems in Oklahoma” [Haiar, 2025.10.22].

Committee member and patient advocate Kasey Entwisle backed Murphy’s point that South Dakota’s medical marijuana program isn’t the problem:

Committee member Kasey Entwisle said she has friends that have teenage children than can walk into smoke shops and access marijuana.

“It’s just easy in Sioux Falls. There’s smoke shops across from every school practically in that town,” Entwisle said. “That’s where they’re getting the access. They’re not getting the access from the medical marijuana program” [Marissa Brunkhorst, “Supt. Says No Students Use Medical Marijuana in SF Schools,” KELO-TV, 2025.10.22].

The committee did bring in one South Dakota witness, Sioux Falls schools superintendent Jamie Nold, who appears to have brought some balance to Wednesday’s hearing:

…no student out of the more than 25,000 students that attend Sioux Falls public schools currently uses medical marijuana, Nold said.

Nold told the committee that while he hasn’t seen an increase in children with medical cards, there is an increase in children’s access to legal means of marijuana from adults.

“What we have seen is an increase in the access that kids will have to adults stash of medicinal marijuana,” Nold said.

As part of his presentation to the committee, one solution Nold asked the committee for was for an increase in funding for prevention and education.

“Education is always a specific area that we look for help,” he said.

At the schools, there are programs that involve school resource officers to discuss drug use prevention.

“We utilize classroom time for that and we will continue to,” he said. “More of it is the accountability of the individuals that are getting these types of products to our kids.”

Nold said marijuana, THC and vape pens are much easier to hide than alcohol in a school setting [Brunkhorst, 2025.10.22].

The committee received written testimony from West Central School District nurse Carly Boom, who told a harrowing story about a student overdose that she implies involved a combination of vaped marijuana tar and a non-cannabis prescription drug. This testimony thus had nothing to do with the medical marijuana industry that the committee is charged with overseeing.

The committee took no action yesterday. The Legislature’s website says the Medical Marijuana Oversight Committee meets again on November 4, starting at 10 a.m.

Related Reading: If Chair Garcia had listened to public radio on her drive to Pierre yesterday, she’d have heard this report about new research showing cannabis oil can treat chronic pain better than opioids.