Cannabis reform in South Dakota snuffed out again

Frustrated with the inability of activists and advocates to herd the booze-soaked, ecocidal South Dakota Legislature and the Republican Party apparatchiks in Pierre into the corral of cannabis common sense an interested party reached out to Matt Kinney, a Spearditch-based attorney who specializes in the defense of clients caught up in the morass of cannabis law in my home state.

Kinney, a member of the legal committee for the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), told ip during a phone interview that the bills based on the kurtz template seeking the reversal of South Dakota's draconian statutes would be voluminous, would require changing the red moocher state's constitution and are beyond his expertise to draft. He represented former Butte County State's Attorney Heather Plunkett after she was railroaded into dismissal by then-Attorney General Marty Jackley, the compromised Division of Criminal Investigation (DCI), Wendel and Jessica Hiland and one of Plunkett's co-workers, Cassie Wendt. Wendt was later rewarded and appointed to the State's Attorney post by South Dakota's outgoing governor, Denny Daugaard.

Heather Plunkett had been a Republican who once served as county vice-chair elected by the central committee of Butte County GOP per the bylaws. She is the daughter of Mike Messmer, a principal in Meade County Republican politics and was appointed State's Attorney in 2010 by scandal-ridden Governor Mike Rounds. After DCI went through her garbage and said they found an empty Colorado cannabis container she pleaded guilty to one count of possession of cannabis less than 2 ounces, possession of paraphernalia and ingesting a substance other than alcohol. She received a suspended jail sentence, underwent periodic substance evaluations, was on probation for a year and was ordered to pay $861 in fees and fines for exercising her cannabis rights in defiance of South Dakota law. Her husband Ryan pleaded guilty to possession of cannabis and received a suspended jail sentence.

Wendel Hiland is a Newell-area handyman and musician who faced 300 years in prison after he was arrested and charged in 2013 by Plunkett with 30 counts of abuse of a minor over the age of seven. He raped a minor then forced Jessica Hiland, who is twenty years younger than Wendel and only possesses an eighth grade education, into a child marriage. Wendel Hiland is only semiliterate himself and presents with dissociative identity disorder comorbid to persecutory delusions typical of so-called "sovereign citizens." That the Hilands or the Division of Criminal Investigation planted cannabis and paraphernalia on the Plunketts is not impossible.

During an interview last year Plunkett told ip cannabis helped to curb her alcohol use after learning the number of problem drinkers in the legal profession is more than double that of the general population. She has not renewed her law license but now she and her family live in Colorado.

Butte County is a hotbed of anti-government foment where a pipe bomb was found on a highway east of Belle Fourche in 2012. Attorney General Marty Jackley owns property near Vale, just down SD79 from Newell.

After posting news of the Kinney interview to the Facebook page of New Approach South Dakota, Executive Director Melissa Mentele responded.

Melissa Mentele: You obviously missed the news. The tribes are already growing in SD and have contracts with huge hemp companies & grocery stores. I'm sorry we don't post everything that is happening in SD on FB. We are doing just fine. 3 legislative bills & a ballot initiative. I'm not sure why you keep trying to stir the pot and say there isn't any advocacy being done here. SD Hemp is being sold all over the US.

interested party: That was under Randy Seiler. After Ravnsborg assumes office he will sue US Attorney Ron Parsons if the Feds don’t raid it. My guy told me that today.

MM: Sorry you are wrong. Ravnsborg supports legalization.

ip: Big, if true.

MM: It's huge. I 100% expect Hemp farming to be legal along with a CBD fix & a small cannabis access bill coming out of session. We already have farmers doing the USDA paperwork & providing the state with plans/surveys. Sorry I don't live on FB I am actually working with numerous state and national groups on SD law. I also took a seat on a national Hemp board & have been traveling speaking & networking for state help.

ip: Unless you adopt my template you’d be farther ahead buying some land in Minnesota and giving up on southern Dakota.

MM: We have 10,000 acres in SD so no thanks. I'm pretty confident it's covered.

ip: Hope you’re raking in the dough, girl. All the best to you and yours this solstice season.

MM: Ha I wish I was making enough to cover a tank of gas. I haven't made a dime. I have a rule until everyone has access I refuse to make money off of any of this.

Mentele's claim that Attorney General and suspected incel Jason Ravnsborg has a road map to legal cannabis has not been corroborated.

Why anyone would want to buy hybrid genetically engineered cannabis seed from Bayer CropScience/Monsanto or some other earth hater every year remains a mystery. It costs about $50,000 to plant 20 acres of CBD-rich GMO hemp so let your non-tribal corn ground laden with glyphosate go fallow for five years and see if you can get organic certification for your value-added crop.

Every ag product, meats both wild and domestic not grown organically in South Dakota are contaminated with glyphosate, dicamba, DDT, mercury, lead, cadmium, PFOs, E. coli, Shigella and Legionella. Industrial cannabis (hemp) grown in the state would be no different. CBD products being sold in South Dakota and other states are little different from raw milk, preserves, pies or juices that are often tainted with hormones, pesticides and worse but sold at farmers markets anyway. Giving the products as gifts is one thing but selling untested product especially through interstate commerce is completely different.

The ditches along the I-29 of my youth were adorned with feral cannabis from Sioux Falls to Omaha: descendants of an agribusiness destroyed by a racist and xenophobic law enforcement industry now dealing with bulging prisons. Nebraska will put therapeutic cannabis on their 2020 ballot. Minnesota towns like Pipestone and Lake Benton near the South Dakota border could reap the coming cannabis whirlwind as the St. Paul City Council urges legalization. In 2016 North Dakota voters passed Measure 5 then the legislature drafted rules and a Republican governor signed it into law now the Botanist in Fargo is the first of eight planned therapeutic cannabis dispensaries in North Dakota for 130 patients or caregivers and the state is processing another 120 applications.

Sully County, South Dakota is one of the richest and most Republican counties in the US but received nearly $12 million in ag subsidies just in 2017 alone. The Hutterites take millions in subsidies, too but that’s who can afford to take the risk and plant industrial cannabis. How is that conservative?

If you're even suspected of ingesting cannabis in the repressive police state that is South Dakota members of the law enforcement industry will force a catheter into your urethra and seize your assets. 64% of women incarcerated in South Dakota jails are drug offenders. The SDGOP's solution? Build more prisons.

The tribal nations trapped in South Dakota should be the primary beneficiaries of cannabis industry growth in my home state and if i was a cannabis lobbyist in South Dakota I would draft a resolution acknowledging there is a segment of the population who believes some medical procedures are offensive to some voters as a compromise to principled conservatives. My elected officials here in New Mexico are conducting a session that is the virtual inverse of the extremist and xenophobic dreck being concocted by the earth haters in Pierre. My advice? Everybody with business in Hughes and Stanley Counties should wear a body cam.

If anyone has additional information about the Plunkett case and wishes to remain anonymous please contact lawrence dot kurtz at yahoo dot com.