Mississippi Bills To Expand Medical Marijuana Access Head To Governor’s Desk

Mississippi lawmakers have sent a pair of bills to expand medical marijuana access to the governor’s desk.

One of the proposals, known as the “Right to Try Medical Cannabis Act,” would create a pathway for patients who don’t have one of the state’s specific delineated qualifying conditions to become eligible for legal marijuana access.

Under HB 1152, from Rep. Lee Yancey (R), doctors could submit petitions to the state Department of Health on behalf of their patients who have chronic, progressive, severely disabling or terminal illnesses. The state health officer would then be able to approve or deny those requests.

Gov. Tate Reeves (R) now has until Thursday to act on the bill, as well as separate legislation to expand the kinds of products that are legally available and to ease some rules for patients and caregivers.

That measure, HB 895, also sponsored by Yancey, would remove a restriction under current law that limits medical cannabis tinctures, oils and concentrates to a potency of 60 percent THC.

The bill would also remove a mandate that patients have six-month follow-up visit with their recommending physicians and would additionally extend medical cannabis caregiver registrations to two years from the current one year.

Both medical cannabis bills first passed the House of Representatives last month and then were amended in the Senate, with the originating chamber then agreeing to those changes last week.

HB 895 as originally introduced would have also extended medical cannabis patient card validity from one year to two years, but the Senate removed that provision.

Reeves can sign the bills into law, veto them or allow them to take effect without his signature.

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The House also passed separate legislation this session to allow terminally ill patients to access medical marijuana in hospitals, nursing facilities and hospice centers, but it stalled in the Senate.

Lawmakers this session sent Reeves a bill to support research in hopes of gaining federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval for the psychedelic ibogaine as a novel treatment option.