https://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle-old/425/sdoverride.shtml

The South Dakota legislature last week overrode a veto by Gov. Michael Rounds (R) to enact a law that will shorten a ban on extracurricular activities for one year by students caught using drugs. The state Senate voted 25-10 to override the veto, while the House voted 51-17 to override two days earlier. Both votes are more than the two-thirds required for an override.

	South Dakota State House

Under a 1997 law, students caught using drugs were barred from participating in sports or other extracurricular activities as a means of discouraging drug use. Students caught a second time would be banned from activities for the rest of their high school careers. Under the bill introduced by Rep. Casey Murschel (R-Sioux Falls), that ban is reduced to 60 days on a first offense if the student agrees to submit to a chemical dependency assessment and follow its recommendations.

As early as 2000, administrators in the Sioux Falls School District, the state's largest, began discussing revising the law to allow students to rejoin non-classroom activities. But it took until this session to get a reform through the legislature, and Gov. Rounds, who was Senate majority leader when the tough law passed, tried to kill it with the veto.

"They think they are doing something good for students, but they are not," Rounds said in a written statement issued after the override. "The change will cause two bad things to happen: There will be an increase in the number of students using drugs after their sport season is over because they will now be able to jump into 60 days of counseling so they can play in next year's sport season, and there will be an increase in the number of elementary, middle school and high school students trying drugs because they will see that they can game the system to both use drugs and still play in their sport every season."

But Murschel said the original law was counterproductive. "I don't think anyone disagreed, ever, with what we were trying to do -- in the original law or my bill," she said. "We all want to do what we can to discourage drug use in South Dakota. But the original law wasn't working. We needed to try something else."

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