Practitioners not subject to arrest, prosecution, penalty, or discipline for certain conduct.

No practitioner is subject to arrest, prosecution, or penalty of any kind, or denied any right or privilege, including civil penalty or disciplinary action by the South Dakota Board of Medical and Osteopathic Examiners or by any other occupational or professional licensing board or bureau, solely for providing written certifications or for otherwise stating that, in the practitioner’s professional opinion, a patient is likely to receive therapeutic or palliative benefit from the medical use of cannabis to treat or alleviate the patient’s serious or debilitating medical condition or symptoms associated with the serious or debilitating medical condition. Nothing in this chapter prevents a practitioner from being sanctioned for:

Terms Used In South Dakota Codified Laws 34-20G-5

  • Arrest: Taking physical custody of a person by lawful authority.
  • Medical use: includes the acquisition, administration, cultivation, manufacture, delivery, harvest, possession, preparation, transfer, transportation, or use of cannabis or paraphernalia relating to the administration of cannabis to treat or alleviate a registered qualifying patient's debilitating medical condition or symptom associated with the patient's debilitating medical condition. See South Dakota Codified Laws 34-20G-1
  • written: include typewriting and typewritten, printing and printed, except in the case of signatures, and where the words are used by way of contrast to typewriting and printing. See South Dakota Codified Laws 2-14-2

(1) Issuing a written certification to a patient with whom the practitioner does not have a bona fide practitioner-patient relationship; or

(2) Failing to properly evaluate a patient’s medical condition.

Source: Initiated Measure No. 26, approved Nov. 3, 2020, eff. Jul. 1, 2021.