Mississippi Governor Will Not Sign Medicinal Cannabis Law Without Major Changes |

Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves announced Tuesday that he will not sign a medical cannabis bill proposed by state lawmakers, saying the legislation will allow patients access to too much medicinal cannabis. In a message posted on Facebook, the Republican governor wrote that he would support the move if lawmakers cut the daily cap on medical marijuana purchases in half.

“I hope that legislature leaders will find it appropriate to reduce the enormous amount of weed that they want to make legally available so that I can sign their bill and we can solve this problem,” Reeves wrote.

Mississippi voters voted in November 2020 for Initiative 65, an election campaign to legalize the medicinal use of marijuana. In May, however, the Mississippi Supreme Court overturned the law, citing constitutional inconsistencies in the state’s initiative process.

In September negotiators with the Senate and Mississippi House of Representatives announced that they had reached an agreement on a medical cannabis plan that is materially different from Initiative 65, including provisions that would allow local jurisdictions to regulate where medical is Marijuana can be grown, processed and sold.

Reeves rejects cap on cannabis purchases in Mississippi

On Tuesday, Reeves said the legislature’s draft bill addressed some of his concerns about establishing a medical marijuana program in Mississippi. However, the governor added that he is still preoccupied with the question of how much cannabis a patient can buy.

“Unlike any other drug, this program gives you virtually unlimited access to marijuana once you qualify. There’s no pharmacist involved or a doctor to set the amount, ”Reeves said. “There’s only what the legislature calls a ‘budtender’ serving you pot.”

Reeves noted that the lawmakers plan would allow patients to buy up to 3.5 grams of medicinal cannabis per day. Reeves wrote that “a simple Google search shows that the average joint contains 0.32 grams of marijuana,” Reeves said that each patient was entitled to enough cannabis for 11 joints a day. The governor then offered patient statistics from Oklahoma, where around 376,000 patients have registered for the medical cannabis program.

“An equivalent filing rate in Mississippi would be 300,000 Mississippi with one card to get up to 11 joints a day. That would allow 3.3 million joints per day to be paid out in our state, which is about 100 million joints per month, ”Reeves extrapolated. “That would be 1.2 billion legal joints sold in Mississippi each year. Call me crazy, but I think that’s too broad a starting point. “

Instead, Reeves suggested that lawmakers drastically lower the daily limit on medical cannabis purchases.

“I ask the legislature to simply cut this amount in half to start the program,” he wrote. “It’s a simple solution.”

Reeves also suggested reconsidering the medical cannabis limit if the changed upper limit proves insufficient for patient needs.

“We can sit down in five years and thoroughly review the actual results,” wrote the governor. “But – as the father of three daughters I love very much – I can’t put my name on a bill that brings so much marijuana to the streets of Mississippi.”

The legislature will take up the bill during the new legislative period, which begins at the beginning of next month. Already, many cannabis activists are frustrated that Reeves failed to implement his plans to call a special session to discuss the matter.

“This program should have been running by now,” Shea Dobson, founder of the Mississippi Citizens Alliance, told reporters last month. “I mean, we should have been using medical marijuana as we speak. And every day that goes by the governor moves the goalposts; We continue to see that patients suffer more. “