Water quality, marijuana laws and the opioid crisis will be topics of discussion among legislators gathering in Sioux Falls this week. 

Legislators from the Dakotas, Minnesota and Manitoba are meeting this week to hear from experts and discuss cross-border policy issues during the annual International Legislators Forum, which is being held in Sioux Falls this year. The forum, in which eight legislators from each jurisdiction meet, grew out of the 1997 Red River flood and is facilitated by the Consensus Committee, a public policy nonprofit based in Bismark, N.D.

"It's a way of trying to solve problems and try to minimize partisan politics," said Sen. Reynold Nesiba, D-Sioux Falls, who helped organize this year's forum.

The forum's goal is to reach a consensus on each topic at the end of the conference — although sometimes the only consensus the legislators can come to is that the topic is important. The potential solutions may also look different for each jurisdiction because of the differences between the states and province, said Rep. Steven Haugaard, R-Sioux Falls, who also helped organize this year's forum.

The consensus reached at the forum typically doesn't have an immediate impact on policy, but policies reflecting the forum's discussions usually start to pop up in the different jurisdictions within a couple years, said Scott Fry, the senior program director of the Consensus Council.

The three topics were chosen because they're hot-button issues for all the jurisdictions right now, Haugaard said.

The legislators are expected to spend Tuesday afternoon discussing legalized marijuana. A panel discussion is expected to include government staff from South Dakota, Manitoba and Colorado, and a cannabis industry lobbyist. Marijuana laws differ among the ILF entities — it's illegal in South Dakota and legal in Manitoba, while only medical marijuana is legal in Minnesota, and possession of a small amounts of marijuana no longer results in jail time in North Dakota.

They're particularly interested in hearing about the impact legalized marijuana has on a state and how it affects the adjacent states, Nesiba said. That can also lend itself to a discussion about industrial hemp as states work to address issues related to the legalization of it at the federal level, Haugaard said.

The opioid crisis will be the focus of Wednesday's discussions, with doctors, law enforcement and a judge scheduled to talk to legislators. The different perspectives will be helpful because it's a difficult issue, Nesiba said. He also hopes that the discussion can include the meth epidemic.

"The problem doesn't stop at our state borders, it flows over them," Nesiba said.