A.G. candidate speaks at Republican luncheon

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HURON – South Dakota can best fight back against the rising tide of methamphetamine by isolating and treating users in a stand-alone facility in the west-central region of the state, Republican attorney general candidate Jason Ravnsborg said Monday.
“And only if you use meth do you go there,” he said at a Beadle County GOP campaign lunch in Huron. “We don’t put burglars, rapists, murderers, the violent offenders in with them and make them worse.”
While heroin and fetenayl use are widespread – with fetenayl being particularly scary because kids are dying from it because they don’t know how potent it is – methamphetamine is the predominate drug problem in South Dakota, Ravnsborg said.
He and his Democratic opponent, Randy Seiler, disagree on the idea of a methamphetamine prison.
“It’s just a name for it,” Ravnsborg said. “Maybe we can come up with a softer name for it.”
When he talks about a treatment facility only for meth users, he points to one in Wyoming that has a 70 percent success rate. That figure could be even higher, he said, but the fact is a certain number of people simply don’t want to get off the drug.
By taking them away from their communities, meth abusers can go through what has to be a year-long treatment period to break free of it, he said.
“It just rewires your brain in a different way and you crave it so bad,” Ravnsborg said in explaining why it takes so long. He said he would also like to see a mental illness wing at the facility.

Ravsnborg has practiced law in Yankton for more than 17 years. He is also a combat veteran, having served 21 years in the Army Reserves. A lieutenant colonel and battalion commander, he has deployed to Germany, Iraq and Afghanistan, and talks to voters about his experience in leading large numbers of troops, which he says will serve him well in running the attorney general’s office.
Ravsnborg favors President Trump’s proposal to build a wall between the United States and Mexico, not only to curb illegal border crossings, but because it’s a national security issue in the fight against drugs.
Not as many meth labs are in existence – with the potential of exploding in residential neighborhoods – because users can buy the drug cheaper than they can make it, and it is made from better products, he said.
“We’re on the I-90 corridor here from Denver to Minneapolis and that’s where a lot of the drugs come through, and a lot of them come through our reservations,” he said.
He agrees with Seiler that South Dakota needs more rehabilitation services.
At the Yankton trusty unit, inmates are taught skills like welding that can serve them well with high-paying jobs when they’re released, he said.
“The hope is that we give you the skill, and you can get a job, and you don’t go back into the drug lifestyle with your drug friends where you don’t have a purpose in life,” Ravnsborg said.
As attorney general, he wants to “go up the chain” and arrest drug dealers. Presumptive probation for those convicted of lesser drug felonies means that unless there are aggravating circumstances those individuals know they will spend very little time behind bars.
“Beyond that, if they don’t have those,” he said about aggravating circumstances, “basically they know going in they’re going to get probation so there’s no threat of going to jail or prison,” he said.
Without a rehabilitation facility set up, “we continue to slap their hand,” Ravnsborg said.
In the meantime, a few days or more spent in jail is shifting the cost of incarceration from the state to the counties, he said. Locking more people up locally has led to bond issues in some South Dakota communities to add more jail cells, he said.
“The worst part is we’re not getting the dealers,” Ravnsborg said. “When you already have a deal written into the law, the user does not have to work with law enforcement.
“It used to be you had to give law enforcement information, or make a drug buy, or cooperate to get a deal with the prosecutor to get a reduced sentence,” he said.
Ravnsborg said it will be his goal to try to slow down the increasing distribution and use of methamphetamine. The state is not alone in the fight.
“We can’t solve all of our drug problems in just South Dakota, it’s a national problem,” he said. “You have to have cooperation with the U.S. Attorney’s office and other federal officials.”