Noem released a meth awareness campaign named "Meth. We're on It". The campaign was widely mocked and Noem was criticized for spending $449,000 of public funds while hiring an out-of-state advertising agency from Minnesota to lead the project. She defended the campaign as successful in raising awareness. Opposition to cannabis legalization In 2020, Noem opposed two ballot measures to legalize cannabis for medical use and recreational use in South Dakota, saying, "The fact is, I've never met someone who got smarter from smoking pot. It's not good for our kids. And it's not going to improve our communities." After both measures passed, she and two police officers filed a lawsuit seeking a court decision against the measure legalizing recreational use, Amendment A. On February 8, 2021, circuit court judge Christina Klinger struck down the amendment as unconstitutional. After the ruling, she also sought to delay the implementation of the medical marijuana initiative for a year. Ultimately, her efforts failed and medical marijuana became legal on July 1, 2021. Noem has also opposed the cultivation of industrial hemp, vetoing a bill that passed the South Dakota House and Senate in 2019 to legalize hemp cultivation. She said, "There is no question in my mind that normalizing hemp, like legalizing medical marijuana, is part of a larger strategy to undermine enforcement of the drug laws and make legalized marijuana inevitable." 2020 presidential election Noem claimed that the 2020 presidential election, in which Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump, was marred by widespread voter fraud; no evidence supports this claim. On December 8, 2020, Noem tacitly acknowledged the outcome of the election when she referred to a "Biden administration" during her annual state budget address, but even after Biden was inaugurated in January, she still refused to accept that the election was "free and fair." Noem was initially designated to be one of Trump's three presidential electors for South Dakota, but later withdrew. In 2020 the Trump-Pence ticket carried South Dakota, receiving 261,043 votes to 150,471 for the Biden-Harris ticket. After the U.S. Capitol was attacked by a pro-Trump mob on January 6, 2021, disrupting the counting of the electoral votes formalizing Biden's victory, Noem spoke out against the violence, saying, "We are all entitled to peacefully protest. Violence is not a part of that." One day after calling for peace and reconciliation in the aftermath of the assault on the Capitol, Noem called