South Dakota
South Dakota Senate Panel Advances Bills To Ban Intoxicating Hemp And Kratom—But Without Recommendations For Passage – Marijuana Moment
“I’d hate to take a product away from people who are using it responsibly.”
A South Dakota Senate panel advanced—but did not endorse—bans on hemp-derived intoxicants and kratom on Wednesday at the Capitol in Pierre.
Both bills were sponsored by Sen. John Carley, R-Piedmont.
The Senate Health and Human Services Committee voted unanimously to put the two prohibition bills in front of the full state Senate with no recommendation. Committees generally give a “do pass” recommendation to the bills they send out for a floor vote.
The votes came one day after the Senate Judiciary Committee offered its unqualified support for a bill meant to restrict the sale of certain hemp-based products to people older than 21. That bill came from Attorney General Marty Jackley (R).
In testimony about Carley’s bills, business owners and consumers of products like hemp-derived THC seltzers and kratom said they helped people kick opioids or alcohol. They also mentioned sales taxes collected on consumable products and the value of hemp to South Dakota farmers. That led some committee members to oppose the bills and sparked failed attempts to block the proposals. Ultimately, however, the committee opted to let the state Senate weigh in.
“We need to have a conversation about this on the floor,” said Sen. Curt Voight, R-Rapid City. “I think it rises to the level of a legislative decision.”
Possession, sale or use of kratom or THC consumables under each proposal would be a class 2 misdemeanor, punishable by up to 30 days in jail and a $500 fine.
Tighter rules on hemp products
The first bill, Senate Bill 61, aims to act as an outright ban on the possession, sale or use of any intoxicating hemp products in the state outside of licensed medical marijuana dispensaries.
Such products are typically produced by altering or distilling cannabidiol, or CBD, found in the hemp plant to produce forms of tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, which is the intoxicating compound found in greater abundance in the marijuana plant.
Many of the gummies, vape cartridges and other products made using hemp-derived THC variants like Delta-8, Delta-9 or Delta-10 are sold primarily in smoke shops, but THC seltzers are often available at bars, liquor stores or grocery stores.
The products essentially act as a workaround for the prohibition of marijuana in South Dakota by anyone who lacks a medical marijuana card, Carley said. The senator is also a member of the state’s Medical Marijuana Oversight Committee, which has taken testimony from medical cannabis providers about the impact the unregulated market has on their operations.
“This actually is harming the licensed marijuana businesses,” Carley said.
Carley had the support of the South Dakota Police Chiefs’ Association, South Dakota Sheriff’s Association and a group called Protecting South Dakota Kids.
Opponents included representatives for hemp retailers and hemp growers and a handful of business owners, who said the bill’s ban on any products with more than 0.4 percent THC by weight would remove many non-intoxicating products from store shelves, including topical creams.
“All this is a hemp and CBD ban,” said Matt Yde, who sells CBD in Sioux Falls but does not offer intoxicating products. “I would have to close my store, because I would have to remove 90 percent of my products.”
Steve Siegel of the South Dakota Trial Lawyers Association said he’s had many friends who’ve switched to THC seltzers from alcohol or pain killers. He said their popularity shows consumer demand, and getting a medical marijuana card can be expensive and onerous.
“These drinks should be regulated. But they’re selling like wildfire,” Siegel said. “They’re a phenomenal alternative to alcohol.”
Carley responded by saying the state shouldn’t be encouraging people to switch from one mind-altering drug to another.
He was “sorry to hear” about people who’d been addicted to painkillers and alcohol, but said instead of switching to a THC alternative, “They need some friends there. They need some church. They need some God in their life, or even ice cream or tea.”
Enforcement question
State law already bans the sale and production, but not the use, of adulterated THC derived from hemp plants. Lawmakers passed that bill in 2024.
It’s unclear how Carley’s bill criminalizing possession and use would impact enforcement.
An official opinion on the matter came at the request of the city of Brookings, which operates a municipal liquor store and inquired about the possibility of selling Delta-9 THC drinks at the store.
Attorney General Marty Jackley wrote an official opinion in November that said THC drinks containing hemp-derived Delta-9 THC may be illegal if the intoxicating compounds were created by distilling CBD oil.
Without testing, the opinion says, the question of the legality of any particular hemp-derived drink “cannot be answered.”
Carley pointed to that letter in his testimony and said his bill would “help clean this up, so that both the public and the attorney general can have a better way of controlling this.”
Jackley’s office did not testify for or against Carley’s bill.
Later Wednesday, in an emailed statement, Jackley’s office told South Dakota Searchlight that “we appreciate Sen. Carley bringing this issue to the forefront,” and that Jackley will “continue to work with all legislators on legislation that addresses age-appropriate restrictions and guardrails around these products.”
The issue of testing remains, however.
“Generally speaking questions about whether a specific product is ‘intoxicating’ or otherwise prohibited often still come down to what the product actually contains, which is typically established through reputable laboratory testing,” the statement says.
In an interview after the hearing, Carley said he understands that the products are likely being sold illegally already. Adjusting the current law’s verbiage to specify that hemp-derived THC is meant for medical marijuana users will clarify its intent for law enforcement and the business community, he said.
“This just simplifies it for everyone,” Carley said. “If you want to sell this, it needs to be in a dispensary.”
Kratom ban
As with hemp-derived THC, lawmakers in South Dakota have whittled around the regulatory edges of kratom for several years.
Lawmakers passed a bill to ban the sale of kratom to people younger than 21 in 2021. They voted to set potency limits and require safety and dosing labels, and to ban adulterated derivatives of the drug, in 2025.
Kratom products, most forms of which are legal in South Dakota, are made from the leaves of the kratom tree, which is native to Southeast Asia. Sold as powders, pills or in shot-sized drinks sometimes mixed with other ingredients, kratom products can have stimulant or intoxicating effects, depending on the dosage and plant variety used. Kratom can be found in smoke shops, but is also sold in convenience stores across South Dakota.
It can be used to alleviate pain, anxiety or to treat opiate addiction, Carley said, but it can also be abused, lead to addiction and kill people if used improperly.
The Department of Health has tallied at least six deaths from kratom use, Carley said. Health department spokeswoman Tia Kafka told South Dakota Searchlight after the hearing that those deaths came in 2024. Lawmakers passed their latest round of kratom restrictions the following year.
Pointing to a fact sheet from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and a list of states that have banned kratom outright—including, this month, the state of California, whose health department declared its sale illegal—Carley said it’s time for South Dakota to pull the product from shelves. His bill to do that is Senate Bill 77.
“This is an emerging drug issue in the United States,” Carley said.
Michigan resident Susan Eppard testified that she’d lost a son to kratom leaf powder, not to the adulterated versions of kratom lawmakers in South Dakota have already banned.
“Kratom caused him to have a seizure, go into cardiac arrest, and die a violent death on his kitchen floor in front of his girlfriend,” Eppard said.
Matthew Lowe, executive director of the Global Kratom Coalition, said most of the issues associated with kratom use have been tied to the adulterated product. He also said that 18 clinical trials have shown natural leaf kratom to be safe, and that South Dakota’s move to regulate the products’ labeling may well be enough to mitigate any harms that might come from abuse.
“I think we need to focus on what has been passed and create a safe marketplace before we walk down the path of prohibiting natural kratom leaf entirely,” Lowe said.
Debate focuses on business impact, uncertainty
Sen. Jamie Smith, D-Sioux Falls, supported moves to block both bills in the committee, in part based on concerns about impacts to businesses. Worries about the loss of access to CBD products was a particular concern, he said, given the Carley bill’s THC per container dosage limits.
“We’re doing something per container, and we don’t define the size of the container,” Smith said. “That’s bad legislation.”
Sen. Tim Reed, R-Brookings, meanwhile, said it may be too soon to move on kratom, given testimony about how people can use it to replace opioids or treat pain.
“I’d hate to take a product away from people who are using it responsibly,” Reed said.
Sen. Kevin Jensen, R-Canton, represented the majority on both bills, opposing moves to stop the bill in committee. Kratom specifically has become a problem drug for young people in South Dakota, he said, because “it’s so easy to get” in spite of the age limits.
The impact on business and sales tax collections from users of kratom or THC products, he argued, shouldn’t carry weight in debates on drug abuse.
“When we’re looking at public safety, I don’t want to hear about sales tax revenue,” Jensen said.
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The existing water treatment plant for the Minnehaha Community Water Corp. on June 9, 2026, south of Dell Rapids, S.D. (Photo: Bart Pfankuch / South Dakota News Watch)
DELL RAPIDS, S.D. – Scott Buss can only imagine what this town north of Sioux Falls might have looked like – and how many jobs and taxes would have been generated – if there wasn’t a local shortage of available water.
Buss, executive director of the Minnehaha Community Water Corp., sat in the conference room of the rural water system based in Dell Rapids recently and ticked off the industrial and agricultural projects turned away due to a lack of water.
After hitting its limit on how much water it can provide a few years ago, the rural system has had to turn away proposed projects valued at hundreds of millions of dollars that offered an untold number of new jobs, he said.
The rejected projects include the Agropur Cheese plant that eventually opened in Lake Norden. A few proposed hog farms and dairy expansions in northern Minnehaha County were also stalled, Buss said.
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Other proposals, most of which never came to fruition in South Dakota, included the $1.5 billion Gevo corn-based jet fuel plant, the $5oo million Wholestone Farms hog processing plant and a data center that at some point all eyed the Dell Rapids area for development.
“All the water rights are spoken for between Dell Rapids and Sioux Falls, so there was no more water to be had in Minnehaha County,” Buss told News Watch in an interview in June. “With all the (residential) development that was coming in, we realized that our well capacity and our treatment capacity was limiting our ability to take on new high water-use customers.”
Buss and the nonprofit corporation’s board of directors aren’t waiting around to potentially miss out on more opportunities.
In a unique arrangement, the corporation is partnering with the neighboring Big Sioux Community Water System to the north on a $170 million expansion project called Shared Resources. The expansion, started three years ago, will use new wells into the Big Sioux Aquifer to generate 8 million gallons of water more per day starting this fall.
“It’s going to be a huge and great benefit for Big Sioux and Minnehaha water,” said Jodi Johanson, director of the Big Sioux system based in Egan. “This project is going to make sure that down the road we have enough water for the future.”
2 systems get stronger together
The Minnehaha water corporation is still able to bring on new residential and retail customers who consume part of the 9.2 million gallons of treated water it can provide on a daily basis.
The system was formed by a group of farmers and landowners in the 1970s but sought a reliable way of providing more and cleaner water to residents of Minnehaha County outside of Sioux Falls who relied exclusively on individual wells. The system started with about 1,200 customers but has grown to more than 5,500 now in seven cities, mostly north of the Sioux Falls metro area.
Given the limits on water from the aquifer, and balancing the water needs of consistent housing and retail growth in northern Minnehaha County, the water system had to say no to developments that request 1 million or more gallons of water per day, Buss said. A million gallons per day is equivalent to the water consumption of about 4,300 homes, he said.
Billions needed to keep South Dakota taps flowing
South Dakota water systems will increasingly turn to the Missouri River to provide water for future population, agricultural and industrial growth. But plans will require billions of dollars and decades of construction to keep taps flowing freely.
As with other rural water systems in South Dakota, the aquifers the systems rely on for their water are either running low or are legally tapped out, or both.
In the case of Minnehaha water corporation, the Big Sioux River Aquifer has gotten drier, but state law is also preventing it from taking more water from the aquifer.
In 1996, the state Water Management Board allocated water rights, or withdrawal limits, to systems that take groundwater from the aquifer, Buss said.
Those limits have now been reached, meaning that Minnehaha water cannot take any more than the 7 million gallons per day it is drawing now.
The system also receives about 2 million gallons per day from the Lewis & Clark Regional Water System, making its daily maximum capacity of about 9.2 million gallons per day, which it sometimes reaches, especially during spring planting season or hot summer months.
Directly to the north, the Big Sioux Community Water System produces up to 2 million gallons per day for about 2,400 customers in Moody and Lake counties as well as some in Brookings County and in western Minnesota, Johanson said.
The system still has room within its water rights to draw more water, making it an attractive partner for Minnehaha water.
Though Big Sioux Community Water System has not turned away any large projects, it needs more water to serve a boom in residential growth in the region, Johanson said.
In the area around Lake Madison, near Madison, developers are considering projects that could someday bring 500 new homes and a new nine-hole golf course, she said.
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The system also serves a number of dairies that use significant water and provides water to the Dakota Ethanol plant in Wentworth, which is undergoing an expansion. Farmers in the region are also using greater quantities of water to deliver chemicals onto their land, Johanson said.
“This is our first expansion,” she said. “We’re looking forward and we’re trying to find the solution before we face a problem.”
Federal government and customers pay the way
The biggest Shared Resources ticket item is a new $80 million water treatment plant that is nearly completed on 240th Street a few miles north of Dell Rapids.
A 20-inch pipeline from the plant to the east will end at a 1.5 million gallon water tower, and a 24-inch pipeline to the west will terminate at a ground-level storage tank with a 4 million gallon capacity.
Six new wells will draw the water, and the storage tanks will provide both pressure and the ability to adapt to changing demands without service interruption, Buss said.
As with most modern water projects, the costs will be shared by government and end users. The systems are funding the project with $49 million in grants from the Biden-era American Rescue Plan Act and $121 million in low-interest loans from South Dakota’s Drinking Water State Revolving Fund.
The two systems are sharing the cost of the project loans commensurate with how much water they will receive, meaning Minnehaha will pay 65% of the costs for its 5 million gallons per day while Big Sioux will kick in 35% for its 3 million gallons more per day.
Minnehaha water is assuming $87 million in new debt and Big Sioux will take on $42 million in new debt, Buss said.
The average residential consumer in both systems that uses about 7,000 gallons per month will see their bill rise to $135 a month, roughly double the cost in 2020.
“It’s a big project, and it’s a good example of how two systems can work together to have some economies of scale,” Buss said.
Ratepayers will see a significant increase in their monthly water bills. The average residential consumer in both systems that uses about 7,000 gallons per month will see their bill rise to $135 a month, roughly double the cost in 2020, Buss said.
A big project, but even more water needed
But both systems view the Shared Resources project as a temporary fix and both are looking toward proposed projects that will tap the Missouri River for more water in the future.
Buss said his system has applied for 10 million gallons more water per day from Lewis & Clark, which has two expansion efforts planned.
Minnehaha water has simultaneously applied to receive 10 million gallons per day from the proposed Dakota Mainstem Regional Water System, a potentially $10 billion project to carry Missouri River water to more than 50 communities and organizations across eastern South Dakota and parts of Minnesota and Iowa.
The dual application effort is to make sure Minnehaha water can rely on taking in more water from at least one of the two systems as they come online, Buss said.
Johanson said Big Sioux has also signed on to accept water from Dakota Mainstem, even if it takes 20 to 40 years for the water to begin flowing.
To ensure that steady supply of high-quality drinking water, four major projects are in progress to take more water from the Missouri River – including WEB Water in the northeast, Lewis & Clark and the proposed Dakota Mainstem in the southeast as well as the proposed Western Dakota Regional Water System in western South Dakota and the Black Hills.
The projects are part of a wide-scale increase in water service capacity now underway in South Dakota, where water managers of several systems are implementing plans to serve the state for the next 40 to 50 years.
Regional rural water systems such as Minnehaha and Big Sioux are critical components of those projects because they provide water to communities and individual customers at the end of the delivery system.
Alicia Deschepper, zoning administrator for Moody County, said the water system expansions should allow for more growth to occur in Moody and Minnehaha counties, which are seeing new single-family housing developed at a rapid rate.
“I think it will be a great thing for our county and hopefully enable us to bring in more bigger businesses as well as more homes,” Deschepper said.
South Dakota News Watch is an independent nonprofit. Read, donate and subscribe for free at sdnewswatch.org. Contact content director Bart Pfankuch: 605-937-9398/bart.pfankuch@sdnewswatch.org.
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (Dakota News Now) – The South Dakota Department of Public Safety said a nine-year-old girl from Waterloo, Iowa, is dead following a fatal Hughes County crash on Saturday.
This crash happened on Saturday, July 4, near the Spring Creek Recreation Area about 15 miles northwest of Pierre.
Preliminary crash information suggests a utility vehicle driven by a 37-year-old Iowa man was driving south on Spring Creek Drive. He attempted to turn around and rolled the vehicle.
A 16-year-old boy was also in the vehicle and was hurt, while the driver was not hurt.
The South Dakota Highway Patrol is investigating the crash.
Copyright 2026 Dakota News Now. All rights reserved.
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