“I feel like we're a picket fence on a beach and a tsunami is coming,” said Ed Moses, a retired Missouri State Highway Patrol trooper who has adapted the anti-pot message he once gave to high school students to an anti-legalization message for voters. “This is about my families, my communities and my kids,” Kinyon said.Īt a campaign event for the group last week at a Sioux Falls go-kart and mini golf amusement park, roughly three dozen middle-aged people met to hear a presentation on the dangers of pot use and strategize about how to convince their friends and neighbors not to vote for legalization a second time. The group has run aggressive ads that feature young children's faces overlaid with the words: “Future Drug Addicts.” He's leading an organization called Protecting South Dakota Kids with the message that legalizing pot for adults would be detrimental to children. Jim Kinyon, a counselor who directs Catholic Social Services in Rapid City, said he was caught by surprise when voters decided to legalize pot in 2020. “To fail at the final hurdle is just an intolerable thought to me.”īut Noem's successful block of recreational marijuana has inspired a more robust opposition campaign this year. “We have done so much work to get to this point,” Schweich said, recalling the 2020 campaign, ensuing legal battle and efforts to ensure the Legislature implemented a separate medical marijuana ballot measure. A circuit judge and the state Supreme Court agreed. Kristi Noem authorized a lawsuit arguing it violated a requirement that it address just one subject because it legalized recreational marijuana, medical marijuana and hemp. Schweich added a third argument this year: The will of the voters was overturned.īefore the 2020 constitutional amendment could take effect, Republican Gov. In South Dakota, Schweich's campaign is using the messages that won over voters in 2020: Pot prohibition wastes law enforcement resources and makes it difficult to get for medical purposes. Voters in three states where Republicans control the governor's office and both legislative chambers - Arkansas, Missouri and North Dakota - are deciding on recreational marijuana this year, as is politically divided Maryland. Pot legalization advocates have found success primarily through ballot measures rather than legislatures, especially in GOP-held states. “We need our people to come out and vote." “I think this is a close race,” he said at a news conference to kick off a statewide voter registration tour last week. And it likely faces a different demographic of voters - older and perhaps less inclined toward the drug - in a midterm election rather than in a presidential year, said Matt Schweich, who organized that campaign and is doing so again this year. This time, recreational marijuana stands alone on the ballot. And though 54% of voters approved a constitutional amendment to legalize cannabis in 2020, that campaign may have benefited from the medical marijuana measure that appeared on the same ballot. It's facing strong opposition from conservative groups and figures determined to pull the state back from legalizing pot.
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