City, County and Medical Marijuana | Editorials
2 min read
The Yankton City Commission revisited the medical marijuana issue Monday night, seeking direction on an issue that will officially enter the real legal field in just over two months beyond the Discussion Age.
Meanwhile, the Yankton County Commission has investigated the same issue. The Commissioners are also seeing what is on the horizon and are looking for a way forward.
Both governing bodies face the same future.
It can therefore be practical for the city and the district to study and prepare this topic together.
You should do this because they both face the same problems and problems.
The first and biggest problem is that neither the city, nor the county – or anyone else in the state – has received much guidance from the state on this matter.
At this point it must be emphasized once again that at the beginning of the previous session the legislature was fairly certain that the implementation of medical marijuana, which was ordered by an overwhelming public vote on the initiated measure 26 last November, would be delayed, as the governor had suggested. It didn’t seem (at least from the outside) that this new law, which hit the legislature like a freight train, was very urgent. (The same was true of recreational marijuana, which is now being tried in court, but that’s another problem.) Efforts to postpone the Medicines Act for a year were halted because many lawmakers realized that the will of the people – expressed in a 70% Consent from IM 26 – could not be so easily dismissed or even postponed.
Here, in the last week of April, local officials have little clue as to what will happen on July 1st. You can often feel the frustration among these officials as they search for answers and try to formulate plans.
Since they share the same strangers, it makes sense that they look for answers together, perhaps as a task force or as something even less formal. By working together to collect this information, you can avoid duplication and hopefully get your answers together.
This does not mean that the city and the county will necessarily go the same path in the future. Chances are they’ll approach the problem a little differently and use their own set of rules to better suit their circumstances.
But for this moment, time is of the essence. A lot will have to be decided in about nine weeks to prepare for the requirements of the new law. It seems that it would be best for everyone involved to work on it together.
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