A synthetic version of psychedelic mushrooms will be legal for use in mental health therapy in South Dakota if it’s approved by the federal government.
Republican Gov. Larry Rhoden signed a bill into law on Tuesday that sets the state up to instantly legalize crystalline polymorph psilocybin if the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approves its use and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration reschedules it from a drug of abuse to a drug with medical value.
House Bill 1099 sailed through the House of Representatives 58-7 on the strength of testimony about the drug’s promise in clinical trials as a more effective option for post-traumatic stress disorder and treatment-resistant depression. Lobbyists for combat veterans testified in support of the measure.
The bill met a bit more resistance in the Senate, where Rapid City Republican Sen. Greg Blanc pulled it from the chamber’s consent calendar — a list of noncontroversial bills passed with a single vote unless a senator asks to remove one — to decry the idea of using a psychedelic drug in therapy.
Blanc pleaded with his fellow senators to resist the bill’s conditional legalization, but supporters returned repeatedly to the theme of hope for veterans and treatment-resistant depression and stressed that nothing would happen until the federal government green-lit the drug as safe and effective.
The bill passed the Senate 21-12.
Rhoden also signed a bill on Tuesday to create the crime of fraudulent assisted reproduction. House Bill 1164 was spurred by the actions of a fertility doctor in Indiana who inseminated dozens of women with his own sperm without their knowledge. His story inspired the Netflix documentary “Our Father,” which Piedmont Republican Rep. Terri Jorgenson saw before deciding to craft and sponsor the bill.
Starting July 1, it will be a felony crime to engage in fraudulent assisted reproduction in South Dakota. Parents or children affected by it will be empowered to seek civil damages.
The governor also announced on Tuesday morning that he’d signed a bill requiring social media companies with 100 million or more monthly users to give to South Dakotans, upon request, a copy of all personal data collected about them. Senate Bill 111 also sets up parameters for usability and access of the requested data.
Later in the day, Rhoden’s office issued a press release to say he’d signed Senate Bill 164, requiring motorists with commercial driver’s licenses to be proficient in English, and Senate Bill 180, which says non-U.S. citizens must have legal status to have CDLs.
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