The question is often asked. Is weed legal in Mississippi?
The answer is — somewhat.
In 2022, the Mississippi Legislature passed a bill to create a medical marijuana program, and Republican Gov. Tate Reeves signed the bill on Feb. 2 of that year, making Mississippi the 37th state to legalize cannabis.
The legislation directed the Mississippi State Department of Health and Mississippi Department of Revenue to oversee various aspects of the Mississippi Medical Marijuana Program.
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Before that, in 2020, the state legalized medical marijuana through a ballot initiative with 75% of the voters who cast ballots in the general election. However, that vote sparked a challenge led by long time Madison Mayor Mary Hawkins-Butler.
State law, it was argued, was outdated because it required signatures to come in equal proportion from the state’s “five” congressional districts. In 2000 the state went from five congressional districts to four, and state laws around gathering signatures from the original five districts were never updated.
The Mississippi Supreme Court in 2021 ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, leaving medical marijuana in a temporary limbo, and it threw the state’s ballot initiative process out the window until lawmakers can agree to bring it back with the correct number of congressional districts from which to gather signatures.
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In order to purchase medical cannabis, you first need to obtain a medical prescription card from a state-registered physician. There are also more than 20 conditions that qualify a patient to receive a medical cannabis card.
Qualifying conditions include cancer, Parkinson’s Disease, Glaucoma, Crohn’s Disease, Ulcerative Colitis, among others. The Mississippi Medical Cannabis Program keeps an updated list of conditions.
Requests for adding certain conditions to the list can also be made to the Mississippi State Department of Health.
Once you are diagnosed with one of the qualifying conditions and prescribed medical marijuana, you can then use that card to gain access to dispensaries.
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An out-of-state medical cannabis patient can purchase their weed products in Mississippi, but they first need to register with the Mississippi State Department of Health and provide proof of their valid medical cannabis card from their home state.
As of early October, there are 45,689 active, registered patients. Here are the numbers for businesses across the state that supply those patients with cannabis products:
Out-of-state businesses cannot sell, test or manufacture medical marijuana products in Mississippi, and they can only own a certain controlling percentage of medical marijuana businesses in Mississippi.
As for what patients can buy at a dispensary, the answer is a bit tricky.
According to a Mississippi Medical Marijuana Program guide, patients can purchase 24 Mississippi Medical Cannabis Equivalency Units, or MMCEUs, which are the units of measurement for medical cannabis. The most MMCEUs a patient can buy is 24 for every month or 30-day period, and people can have no more than 28 MMCEUs in their possession at one time.
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One MMCEU is equivalent to 3.5 grams of flower, one gram of THC concentrates such as oils and wax, or 100 milligrams of THC in an infused product.
For now, recreational marijuana no-go in Mississippi. However, advocates in and out of the state are pushing for legislation that will make it easier for companies that operate in recreationally legal states to do business in Mississippi.
As of October, there are 24 states in the U.S. that have legalized recreational marijuana.
Grant McLaughlin covers state government for the Clarion Ledger. He can be reached at gmclaughlin@gannett.com or 972-571-2335.
