Write a Letter-to-the-Editor

Letters-to-the-editor are a great way to encourage your community to stand up for medical marijuana patients on November 7. Below are tips and talking points that will help you craft a short but powerful letter.

The major newspapers and the e-mail addresses or web forms to submit letters to in South Dakota are:

Tips for writing effective letters-to-the-editor:

Try to convince the reader in as few words as possible — not more than 200 words, preferably fewer. The shorter and more powerful a letter is, the more likely it is to be published.

Be sure to include your contact information — including your phone number, city, and ZIP code — so that the editors can verify that you are the author of the letter. Many newspapers will not publish letters that cannot be verified.

If possible, make your letter more timely by mentioning a recent news event in your area or an article in that newspaper. Letters referring to an article the paper has recently published are the most likely to run.

If sending your letter by e-mail, do not send it as an attachment. Because attachments can carry computer viruses, many newspapers have programs that block all e-mails that have attachments. Paste the text into the e-mail itself.

Some points you can mention in your letters

Please feel free to use one or more of these talking points. But please remember that a concise, personally crafted letter is more likely to get published.

  • The South Dakota medical marijuana initiative is a compassionate and commonsense proposal to allow terribly ill people to use medical marijuana according to their doctors' advice.
  • Eleven other states — including Montana — have very similar laws that are working well and protecting patients.
  • Many otherwise-illegal substances, such as cocaine and morphine, can legally be prescribed by doctors. The same should be true for marijuana.
  • Safe and legal access to medical marijuana is supported by a growing coalition of medical, religious, and legal organizations, including the American Nurses Association, the American Public Health Association, the United Methodist Church, and the American Bar Association.
  • Ultimately, the decision of what medicine is best for an illness should be left up to the patient and the doctor, not to the government.
  • Many of the legal alternatives proposed by opponents of medical marijuana are too expensive, too addictive, and have too many side effects to be good medicine for all patients. Some patients simply do not respond to other medicines.
  • Chemotherapy patients who are too nauseated to eat or swallow a pill should not have to fear arrest if they — and their doctors — find that smoking marijuana is the most effective means of treating their symptoms.
  • Medical marijuana could save thousands of lives each year: about 20% of all cancer deaths are caused by wasting away. Yet, a study found that marijuana reduced nausea and vomiting in 78% of chemotherapy patients who did not respond to other treatments. Saving your life should not be a crime.
  • When they have their doctors' approval, patients should be able to use medical marijuana without fear of arrest and imprisonment. They should also be able to rely on a safe supply of marijuana, without having to resort to the dangerous criminal market.
  • The South Dakota legislature has failed to act on medical marijuana bills and the South Dakota Supreme Court ruled that the medical need for marijuana is not currently a legal defense. Now, it's up to the people of South Dakota to pass the medical marijuana initiative to protect patients.
  • Our state government should use tax money to prosecute violent crime, not punish medical marijuana users.