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South Dakota’s medical-cannabis program that voters established in 2020 has proven more popular than expected, but its future is financially uncertain, according to its administrator.
Jennifer Seale made those points Monday to the Legislature’s Medical Marijuana Oversight Committee.
Seale said the original projection was that the state Department of Health would issue 6,000 patient cards by the third year of the program. The department had already issued 11,437 cards through a year and a half, she said.
The department issued its first card to a patient in November 2021. The first dispensary opened in January 2022 and the first legal harvest of South Dakota-grown cannabis occurred in June 2022.
Seale is the new program’s third administrator. She said the program relies on revenues from cannabis business registrations and patient cards. Those sources totaled $1,370,568 revenues in the budget year that ended June 30.
The unknowns she identified were when the patient pool will be saturated, whether the number of establishments will get smaller — there are 139 currently licensed – and what the costs will be to enhance software systems used to track patients and purchases.
Seale said the department is working on a new set of proposed rules. They hadn’t been publicly posted as of Monday afternoon. She showed the oversight panel a timeline calling for the package to be presented on November 7 to the Legislature’s Rules Review Committee.
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