by Mayor Greg Beaner
It has been a little while since I have written an editorial for the paper. I mentioned a controversial topic while visiting with Carrie and she thought it would be an interesting editorial topic. Last week there was a Mayor’s Council meeting in Sioux Falls, and it was sponsored by the Sioux Metro Growth Alliance. It involved mayors from Lincoln, McCook and Minnehaha Counties. A guest speaker met with us via Zoom. John Suthers is the mayor of Colorado Springs and the former Attorney General of Colorado. He spoke with us regarding recreational marijuana.
As many of you may know, medicinal marijuana was legalized, and as a city we have been working to create rules for a dispensary. The state has also been working on laws regarding who qualifies for medicinal marijuana. Recreational marijuana was on the same ballot but has been challenged in the SD Supreme Court. The Supreme Court heard the arguments on the topic four months ago, and we are waiting to hear the results. I’ve noticed that there are people gathering names for petitions to legalize recreational marijuana. I’m very confident that no matter what the Supreme Court rules, we will be dealing with this topic again.
Mayor Suthers brought up some interesting points about Colorado’s laws regarding marijuana. If you don’t know recreational marijuana was legalized in Colorado some time ago. His first topic was “The Lies of Recreational Marijuana”. The first lie is that legalizing marijuana will eliminate the black market sales of marijuana. Colorado has found that the black market sales have actually increased due to the higher prices of legal marijuana. This in in addition to the legal sale of the drug. The second lie is that the sales tax revenue will help fund education. There is some increased funding to education, but it is far out-weighed by the increased costs of law enforcement. The third lie is that legalizing the sale of marijuana will keep it out of the hands of underage users. They have found that after marijuana was legalized, youth consumption has significantly increased.
Mayor Suthers also noted that there were several mistakes or oversites that the state of Colorado made when they legalized recreational marijuana. Allowing “home grow” marijuana makes it very difficult for law enforcement to enforce who is growing and how much they’re growing. There are cartels renting houses and running growing operations out of these residences. Colorado also did not set a limit on how much THC can be in a product. Marijuana businesses have created products that have extremely large amounts of THC. Large amounts of THC create psychotic behavior and they believe that it has increased the suicide rate among teenagers. They have also found that there is no way to test for impaired driving with THC users. Mayor Suthers also promised that if marijuana were legalized in our state, crime would increase not decrease. Looking at how much our current crime is drug related, it wouldn’t surprise me.
It is important for South Dakota to have a strong, reliable work force. Testing positive for THC severely limits the available jobs at which a user could work. South Dakota has several problems already with work force, legalizing marijuana would only make these problems worse. Lastly, Mayor Suthers emphasized that recreational marijuana is a big business controlled by big out of state companies. Even small local dispensaries are quickly bought out by bigger companies.
As we move forward with this topic I just wanted to give people a few things to think about. Are there really any benefits to allowing recreational marijuana? Is this the legacy that we want to leave for our children? Thank you for your time and I hope that everyone has a safe and blessed Thanksgiving.
Greg Beaner, Mayor
City of Garretson
