Minnehaha County, SD Public Conduct: Public Marijuana Use (2026)

Minnehaha County adopted Ordinance MC 58-21 on July 20, 2021, under the authority of SDCL 7-8-33 and SDCL Chapter 34-20G, after the Board of County Commissioners found that consuming or smoking cannabis in public annoys, injures, and endangers the comfort, repose, health, or safety of others. Section 2 states the ordinance's purpose is to prohibit cannabis consumption and smoking in any public place in Minnehaha County outside of an incorporated municipality, meaning it reaches unincorporated pockets of the county but not the city limits of Sioux Falls, Brandon, or Dell Rapids, which regulate the same conduct under their own codes.

Section 3 defines 'public place' broadly: any area the public is invited into or permitted to use, any place of employment, and areas in, on, or around a public place, including parking lots, elevators, lobbies, hallways, corridors, and areas open to the public inside a business, workplace, or multifamily residential building. Section 4 makes it unlawful to consume or smoke cannabis, medical cannabis, or cannabis products in any such public place, regardless of whether a practitioner of the medical arts has prescribed the cannabis. Section 5 sets the penalty: a fine up to the amount set by SDCL 22-6-2(2), imprisonment of up to thirty days, or both, for each violation.

The ordinance took effect immediately after its second reading under SDCL 7-18A-8, and Section 6 severs any part later found unconstitutional without invalidating the rest.