Medical Marijuana Initiative Campaign Begins Collecting Signatures Next Week in Mississippi
Proponents behind a medical marijuana legalization initiative in Mississippi will begin collecting signatures next week in an attempt to place the proposal to a vote of the people in 2020.
Mississippians for Compassionate Care is running the campaign, called Medical Marijuana 2020. According to State Representative Joel Bomgar (R), who’s a steering committee member for the group, they will begin collecting signatures for their initiative next week. They will need to collect roughly 100,000 signatures for the measure to be on the November, 2020 ballot.
“Medical Marijuana 2020 is a campaign to make medical marijuana available to Mississippians who have debilitating medical conditions”, states the group’s website. If approved, the proposal “would allow physicians to certify medical marijuana for patients with debilitating medical conditions and then allow those patients to obtain medical marijuana in a legal and safe manner from treatment centers licensed and regulated by the Mississippi State Department of Health.”
Qualifying conditions would include “cancer, epilepsy and other seizures, Parkinson’s disease, Huntington’s disease, multiple sclerosis, post-traumatic stress disorder, HIV, AIDS, chronic pain, ALS, glaucoma, Crohn’s disease, sickle-cell anemia, autism with aggressive or self-injurious behavior, spinal cord injuries, and similar diseases.”
The initiative would authorize licensed marijuana dispensaries to distribute the medicine, and would place no limit on the number of outlets allowed throughout the state.
The full text of the proposed initiative can be found by clicking here.