“I took samples to indicate him what an oz truly seems to be like—what 3.5 grams truly seems to be like.”
By Nick Judin, Mississippi Free Press
Medical marijuana, revenue tax reform, legislative redistricting, instructor pay, the rebuilding of the poll initiative course of and greater than $1.6 billion in federal funds from the American Rescue Plan Act ready for appropriation are excessive on the agenda of the 2022 Mississippi legislative session. As they returned on January 4, lawmakers confronted an enormous slate of priorities and a restricted window during which to perform them.
Looming above all of it is the continued omicron surge, probably the most infectious stage of the pandemic to date. The day the session gaveled in, the Mississippi State Division of Well being was recording 6,592 new circumstances of COVID-19, blowing by August’s peak of 5,048.
Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann (R) was the primary high-profile an infection of the legislative session, exhibiting as much as gavel in solely a day earlier than testing optimistic, doubtlessly exposing quite a few legislators, capitol staff and many of the capitol press corps. Hosemann, who beforehand examined optimistic in an earlier legislative outbreak and is absolutely vaccinated, is having an asymptomatic case.
Of all of the priorities within the close to future for the quick session, none has been extra comprehensively mentioned, tweaked, debated and recalibrated than the state’s long-awaited medical-marijuana plan. With a supportive majority throughout each the Home and Senate, solely Gov. Tate Reeves’s (R) opposition threatens the plan’s adoption.
One Final Assembly with Governor
Medical marijuana, which voters approved in 2020 earlier than the whole ballot initiative process was overturned in 2021, is predicted to be an early precedence of the Legislature. After months of legwork, together with hearings, conferences and personal conversations between legislators, restricted room to barter on the small print of the proposal stays.
Wednesday afternoon, Sen. Kevin Blackwell (R), who’s the architect of the medical-marijuana invoice on the Senate facet, had a remaining assembly with Gov. Reeves to return to an settlement on the invoice’s final particulars. Reeves’s opposition to the plan has advanced from obscure distaste to the promise of a veto if the invoice approves medical-marijuana recipients for the at present deliberate quantity of marijuana.
“I consider 11 joints a day, daily, for everybody with a MJ card is an excessive amount of! And I consider the potential of 100,000,000 joints PER MONTH on the streets is extra of a leisure program,” the governor wrote on social media in late December.
In an interview with the Mississippi Free Press, Blackwell described the assembly as cordial, however acknowledged that neither occasion was inclined to budge on the most important points. “I assumed it went effectively. [The governor] was receptive, appreciative of the assembly. Hopefully we moved the bar a little bit bit nearer to an settlement,” Blackwell mentioned. “He was non-committal, in order that they’re going to consider what we mentioned and get again with us.”
Niceties apart, the legislative proposal to date isn’t buckling beneath the governor’s strain. “We’ve offered what we thought was affordable,” Blackwell mentioned. “The quantity has not modified. It’s nonetheless 4 ounces [per month] proper now.”
The Legislature’s proposal, which is meant to fill in for the broadly worded Initiative 65, permits physicians with a “bona-fide practitioner-patient relationship” to certify sufferers for hashish. These hashish certifications present for the acquisition of medical hashish in varied types, together with smokables. Reeves, who beforehand indicated that settlement between the Home and Senate could be ample for a 2021 particular session to move the invoice, needs deeper restrictions on the quantity of marijuana offered to sufferers.
Blackwell instructed the Mississippi Free Press that he hoped Mississippi’s extra safeguards in opposition to leisure use of the medical-marijuana product would persuade Reeves that the present limits on provide could be ample.
“We talked in regards to the variations between what he has portrayed as being Oklahoma’s invoice…to the issues that we’ve accomplished, what we’ve put in place, the safeguards which Oklahoma didn’t have,” he mentioned. “They didn’t have a seed-to-sale monitoring system. I don’t consider there’s any cap on the [qualifying] diagnoses, we have now, I feel, 28 debilitating diagnoses.”
“Counties and municipalities can choose out of this system,” Blackwell added. “We’ve gotten so many [safeguards] in place.”
Blackwell says he introduced bodily samples of hemp, which is authorized, to the assembly for the governor to look at. “I took samples to indicate him what an oz truly seems to be like—what 3.5 grams truly seems to be like.”
Governor’s Veto Forward?
Whether or not the enchantment strikes the governor or not could also be extra related than legislative backers of the plan would hope. “We’ve the votes to get it by,” Blackwell mentioned, which means the bulk essential to ship the invoice to the governor. “Will we have the votes to override a veto? I don’t know. That’s a subject of dialogue for one more day.”
Diplomatic as his dialog with the governor could have been, Blackwell appeared assured that the Legislature had accomplished its half, collectively, to create a passable invoice.
“Lee Yancey’s been nice. Speaker [Philip Gunn] and Jason White have been nice. It has been an eye-opening expertise to undergo a invoice of this nature. I don’t know if any invoice has been vetted like this…with the transparency that’s occurred,” Blackwell mentioned in an earlier interview.
For medical marijuana, Lt. Gov. Hosemann now holds the ball, set to assign the invoice to the related committee as he recovers from his second case of COVID-19. Blackwell defined that the invoice would move to the Public Well being Committee, the place Sen. Hob Bryan (D) would shepherd it to the Senate ground.
In a Wednesday interview, Bryan instructed the Mississippi Free Press that he wouldn’t be a roadblock within the course of, desiring to move it alongside to the ground as shortly as he may. “Assuming a invoice is launched, and assuming it involves public well being…I might name the assembly as quickly as in all fairness sensible,” Bryan mentioned.
Blackwell asserted that not one of the tweaks remaining within the invoice would delay its committee task. Assuming coronavirus doesn’t additional delay the session, which is unknown, a Senate ground vote within the subsequent week appears probably.
This story was first published by Mississippi Free Press.