SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO AM) - A state house committee yesterday sent to the full body a bill that would legalize cannabidiol for treatment of rare seizure disorders.
The House Health and Human Services Committee went a step further and removed a provision that would have allowed dispensing the marijuana extract only until it received approval from the Food and Drug Administration.
The measure also reschedules cannabidiol, an extract with a low level of THC, or the psychoactive element, from the state's definition of marijuana.
Under the legislation, cannabidiol would be prescribed and dispensed by South Dakota doctors and pharmacists.
Most opponents testifying against the measure yesterday in committee were not opposed to its general mission, but to waiting for FDA approval. The committee removed that part of the bill and sent it to the State House on a 7 to 3 vote.
Bill sponsor Senator Blake Curd of Sioux Falls told the committee that he's an unlikely supporter of cannabidiol saying a few years ago he would have been opposed to any bill legalizing any form of medical marijuana.
Curd says he's become better educated thanks to the "resolve of a person very close to me, my own physician assistant, who lives in Iowa and has a child afflicted with intractable pediatric epilepsy and the education I've been able to obtain from her, I probably wouldn't be able to sit here today."