In what can only be described as a Quixotic turn of political fortunes, Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves has signed legislation legalizing medical use of marijuana:
“There is no doubt that there are individuals in our state who could do significantly better if they had access to medically prescribed doses of cannabis,” Reeves wrote in a statement posted to Twitter. “There are also those who really want a recreational marijuana program that could lead to more people smoking and less people working, with all the societal and family ills that that brings.”
The National Conference of State Legislatures says 36 states and four territories already allowed the medical use of cannabis. Mississippi becomes the 37th state.
“For all the people who are touched in some way by a loved one or someone they know who benefits from medical cannabis, this brings their quality of life back,” said Ken Newburger, executive director the Mississippi Medical Marijuana Association, a group that pushed for legalization.
Notice, if you will, that the Governor still trades in tired, War On Drugs tropes, even has he approves a law that may well bring new businesses and more tax revenue to the state.
There are some cultural considerations to the scheduling system, as well. The war on drugs was initiated at a time when much of the nation was in hysterics about what drugs like marijuana and LSD would do to the moral fabric of the country. Marijuana was seen as dangerous not necessarily because of its direct health effects, but because of the perception — partially  rooted in racial prejudices — that pot makes people immoral, lazy, and even violent. This perception persists among many supporters of the war on drugs to this day, and it’s still reflected in America’s drug scheduling.
It hasn’t been an easy road here though – the citizens ballot initiative originally approving medical Marijuana was tossed by the state Supreme Court because it didn’t have equal numbers of signatures collected in five Congressional Districts (which is a state law mandate). You see, Mississippi only has 4 Congressional Districts based on the last two Censuses, and so those opposed to the will of 74% of our voters tried to use a convenient loophole to trash the idea. Most amusingly, the Supreme Court decision vacated the entire citizen initiative provision of state law, which killed an initiative to vacate the state legislature’s decision to give Mississippi a new flag two years ago.
A majority of Mississippi voters approved a medical marijuana initiative in November 2020, and it would have allowed people to buy up to 5 ounces a month. The state Supreme Court invalidated it six months later by ruling that the state’s initiative process was outdated and the measure was not put properly on the ballot.
The state House and Senate, both controlled by Republicans, passed the final version of Senate Bill 2095 last week.
The new law will allow patients to buy up to to 3.5 grams of cannabis per day, up to six days a week. That is about 3 ounces per month. It sets taxes on production and sale of cannabis, and it specifies that plants must be grown indoors under controlled conditions.
Given that the Constitution can be amended by 38 states ratifying an amendment (as is now being contemplated for the Equal Rights Amendment), one might reasonably conclude that the federal government would follow suit since the majority position of the states is now firmly at odds with the federal position. The Biden Administration has previously championed the idea, but with much more important things to attend to – like preserving democracy – I think they can be forgiven for taking a pass on this at the present.Â
What are the federal options?
Congress could pass a law that changes or restricts a drug’s schedule. But Congress mostly leaves scheduling to federal agencies like the DEA. (One exception: Congress previously passed the Hillory J. Farias and Samantha Reid Date-Rape Prevention Act of 2000 and added gamma hydroxybutyric acid, a date rape drug, to the scheduling system.)
The US attorney general can also initiate a review process that would look at the available evidence and potentially change a drug’s schedule.
Given that 37 states now believe – as a matter of law – that marijuana has medicinal benefit, and that eve recreational use is no more a threat to society the alcohol (and we all remember how well Prohibition worked out), one hopes the issue will see some traction on the federal level.
After all, if Mississippi can figure medical marijuana out, surely the opposing ends of Pennsylvania Avenue can as well.
I think that there are two things holding up MMJ at the Federal Level.
1. The Military.
2. “But how will we tax it? No, not like that. No, not like that. No, not like that. No, not…”Report
Less “the military” and more “the military-industrial complex that continues to make drug use incompatible with holding a security clearance.”
The military has an easy out: Add an article to the UCMJ. I suppose language could be added to the US Code to cover civilians but civilians have avenues for recourse (the courts, etc) that aren’t available to the uniformed services.Report
They just need to make sure everyone hears that story about those guys on guard duty in ‘Nam who passed out after smoking and woke up with Charlie cutting their balls off.Report
I suppose that that’s a third reason.
“If we legalize it, a substantial portion of people will realize that we’ve spent the last X years lying. Better to kick that can down the road again.”Report
Cheerfully amended.Report
Nope, the military has no obligation to allow MJ usage just because it’s legal to civilians. The military could ban alcohol if it wanted to, they just know that doing so would be a bad idea.
Banning MJ might also be a bad idea, but legalization is not dependent upon the military accepting it.Report
I imagine that the military has the ear of a handful of very important advisors.
I mean, if they don’t, then we’re stuck with just stuff like “they haven’t hammered down taxation”.
If you add Biden’s approval rating to Congress’s approval rating, you don’t get to the approval rating for legalizing it and I am somewhat dumbfounded that it still hasn’t happened.Report
Sure, but again, the military doesn’t care if it’s legal or not, because it can be banned for members regardless. Even medical MJ (if you have a chronic condition that MedMJ would alleviate, chances are you won’t be eligible to serve or continue serving because of said condition). Honestly, the military would probably prefer it legal, because then it could stop losing members to civilian prosecution for use or possession, and deal with such cases internally through non-judicial punishments.Report
Eh, in the 90’s, the top brass remembered the Vietnam protests. 30 years later, we’ve got a top brass that was just getting started when the whole Clinton thing happened and they came up under the top brass that had some very, very strong opinions.
The lower ranks? I’m sure that they would prefer it legal for the reasons you’re talking about (hell, the Space Force would probably make it mandatory). But the guys who regularly eat lunch with Senators? I don’t know.
But if you’re right, we’re stuck with the only opposition to legalization being the Prison Guard unions and the DEA (and adjacent) and, even as powerful as they are, I don’t see how their efforts are sufficient to be keeping us here.Report
How many Congressmen are serious (or even occasional) weed users?
If they’re like me then all of the serious weed users they’ve known have been seriously dysfunctional and making it legal will encourage it’s use.
Weed is less poisonous than cigarettes. That’s a terrible reason to make it legal since cigarettes is so bad.
The big reason to make it legal is we’ve shown that we can’t really outlaw it, too much of society wants to use it.
Getting Congress to admit there are limits to it’s power and limits to getting people to pass it’s laws is a lift.Report
Colorado figured out to tax it pretty well. Seems we just follow that model.Report
Don’t tell me! Tell them!Report
My understanding is that the biggest challenge to federal legalization is how it would impact our international treaties around drug trafficking.Report
IIRC, the Attorney General can initiate the review, but the actual decision falls solely to the head of the DEA. Who has numerous reasons associated with preserving her bureaucratic empire to not reclassify marijuana.Report
MJ reform is a lot like carceral reform or police reform in that some type of reform is broadly popular but the “Soft On Crime” demagoguery, and prison-industrial complex is still potent and punches way above its weight.Report
Likewise the DEA and various drug task forces.Report
They are helped by counter-majoritarian political institutions and negative partisanship.Report
I actually think state level loosening of the law has taken a lot of the gas out of it federally. The environment is already so different than it was even a decade ago.Report
Not for the 2 million or so federal employees not most of the federal contract workforce. Even if I came down with a condition the MMJ could treat I’d be barred from using it if I wanted to keep my job.Report
I don’t believe that inability to use for legitimate medicinal purposes has ever been the real driver of reform efforts. It was the hard criminalization of recreational use. Some people no doubt benefit from medicinal, and so they should be allowed to, but I think based on the way it has been handled by most states it’s just a pretext to soften prohibition without officially saying so.
You can see the formula at work. Allow quack doctors to prescribe marijuana for a fuzzy set of conditions. Reign in the police from actively pursuing the lower level stuff. Treat simple possession as a civil offense or have mandatory diversion for small amounts. Suddenly the federal schedule becomes a lot more academic to most people.Report
It’s still illegal for me to use in any form for any reason. Now granted the federal
Civil service is only 2 million or so people but absent federal decriminalization we will be outside Star Buds looking in.Report
I hear you man but if you aren’t getting tested and the local police aren’t going to kick your door in over it….Report
Leaving the laws on the table is basically a loaded gun for a pernicious federal prosecutor or tough on crime attorney general. Even if generally not enforced, the federal marijuana rules need change to prevent misuse.Report
Oh I agree 100%. That’s also why I don’t really love the idea of ‘medical marijuana’ as a means of backdoor decriminalization. It leaves the door open for easy reversal, muddies the waters on what is and isn’t legitimate medicine, and lets legislators off the hook on an important issue.
But all that said I’ll take it over the status quo ante. My suspicion is that the federal scheduling will be one of the very last things to go as a lagging indicator that society moved on years ago. What the states do is much more important.Report
One of the big purposes of the ERA is to “address the gender wage gap”.
How is that going to happen? Will the free market be unconstitutional?Report
The wage gap persists in the free market as women still only make 82 cents on the dollar for the same job as a man.Report
It’s not for the same job. It’s the median weekly earnings for female wage and salary workers working full time in any job compared to median weekly earnings for male wage and salary workers working full time in any job.Report
You have to use very large and “comparable” categories to find that. When we adjust for “the same job with the same experience”, within a rounding error they earn the same.
There are multiple sources for the pay difference.
Men tend to cluster around the higher paid degrees and women tend to cluster around the lower paid ones.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2015/04/02/the-equal-pay-day-factoid-that-women-make-78-cents-for-every-dollar-earned-by-men/
Women tend to take off years to go have kids.
Men tend to be more willing to work overtime.
So… do we pay women 20% more for the same work doing the same job? 40 hours a week for a woman is the same as 50 hours for a man? Do we insist that social workers be paid the same as electrical engineers? Totally ban overtime? Have quotas for majors? Force more men into social work?
This is what I mean when I wonder if we’re going to say the free market is unconstitutional. The solutions are seriously ugly given the underlying nature of the problem.Report
Men should be able to take as much time off as women often do. Women would be able to go back to work earlier. The birth/child care thing , as you note, actually has a big effect on earnings and career over a lifetime. Supporting women more and giving men more options would help.Report
Help society? Sure.
Reduce the wage gap? Unlikely. Other countries have tried that.
Given more choice, women choose to stay home with their babies and men choose to work. Let people do what they want and we should expect the wage gap to increase.
Now there are things which might help somewhat. Stress that the degrees don’t all pay the same. The data on that is hard to find and certainly not advertised.
This bleeds into the student loan problem but whatever. Some degrees (often dominated by women) offer bad returns on investment (gender studies (etc), on a previous discussion I looked it up).
The real solution is to change the statistics so we compare apples to apples, i.e. same job to same job, same experience to same experience.Report
I keep hearing about rescheduling marijuana, but there’s nothing wrong with two joints in the morning and two joints at night.Report