Las Vegas, May 18, 2021 – PRESS RELEASE – With more than 10 years’ experience in growing and processing hemp in North America, Hemp Inc. reports it expects its 2021 hemp grows in North Carolina, Wyoming, Arizona and Oregon to be a grand slam. Not only does Hemp Inc. have an established network of industry professionals in every segment of the industrial hemp industry, but it has also enlisted renowned scientist Robert Ian Bruck, Ph.D., chief science officer of Hempire Inc., to oversee its North Carolina hemp grow.

Hemp Inc.’s North Carolina 2021 Hemp Grow

“We expect this year’s grow to be a huge success,” Hemp Inc. CEO Craig Perlowin said. “Dr. Bruck is an intellectual visionary and understands the evolving industrial hemp sector. The interdisciplinary perspective he brings from academia and his professional career is not only unique, but profound.”

According to Dr. Bruck, cannabigerol (CBG) is one of the cannabinoids in cannabis that has more pharmacological benefits than cannabidiol (CBD) for pain, arthritis, etc.

“To date, there are only a few CBG hemp strains in the market. I’m working with one of Hemp Inc.’s growers to breed from a mother plant that Hempire Inc. ordained,” Bruck said. Hempire Inc. is a cannabis delivery service that primarily serves the Stockton, Calif. area but has a division that focuses on CBG genetics which Bruck heads.

“We are making huge strides in breeding very high content CBG hemp strain,” he said. “We have thousands of seedlings in the greenhouse and we’re shooting for 5,000 plants that will be transplanted to the field.”

The plants, to be planted in approximately three weeks, are expected to grow to maturity and harvested around the end of August. The strain being tested in this grow is called “Hemperial 3.” The grow covers about 2 1/2 acres of land in North Carolina.

Bruck is leading Hemp Inc.’s hemp grow in North Carolina and holds a double Ph.D.  He has been the dean of Hemp Inc.’s Hemp University for the past few years. He holds a bachelor’s degree in biology from The State University of New York, Buffalo State; a doctorate in forest pathology, phytopathology from The State University of New York, College of Environmental Science and Forestry; a doctorate in forestry from Syracuse University; and a postdoctoral fellowship from Cornell University, as well as years of experience in the fields of plant pathology and plant ecology.

In addition to the above mentioned, he also serves as director of North Carolina State Institute (NCSU) for Environmental Technology Education; special assistant to the vice chancellor for research, outreach and extension, NCSU; coordinator of university environmental programs; and professor, Depts. of Plant Pathology and Forestry. 

“I have been very fortunate in my career to work with so many incredible people,” Bruck said. “Hemp Inc. has set the bar high in the industry and I look forward to continuing to grow with them as this industry continues to expand.”

Hemp Inc.’s Wyoming 2021 Hemp Grow

In Wyoming, Hemp Inc. is partnering with GreenTree Ag LLC to grow long-stalk industrial hemp on 22.2 acres. The specific cultivars used in this particular grow are HLIANA, HLESIA, and HLUKHIVS’KI, and are scheduled to be planted during the first week in June and harvested during the first week in September. The whole process will be closely monitored using GreenTree Ag’s precision ag methodology from “Soil to Solutions.”

GreenTree Ag’s Precision Ag methodology is evidence-based and bridges the gap between all agricultural data and the equipment that collects and utilizes it.

“We believe that if your operation is to make lasting positive changes in the way you farm and manage your inputs, you must first understand what you’re working with,” GreenTree Ag Founder and CEO Justin Loeffler said. “We provide a simple and effective method to get you started to better input management and optimum hemp production,”

According to Loeffler, a successful grow starts with the initial field analysis. “The initial field analysis was designed for one purpose: provide growers with long lasting accurate information they could count on year after year to build off of, to make impacting management decisions to lower input costs and increase productivity,” he said. The analysis “gets right to the heart of crucial information that will significantly assist the farmer in making positive changes on their farm.”

For more information on using GreenTree Ag’s “Soil to Solutions” visit www.greentreeag.com.

Hemp Inc. expects to harvest 10,000 pounds per acre (30% hemp fiber, 70% hemp herd and 300-500 pounds of seeds per acre, which will primarily be used for next year’s crop). The seeds from this year’s crop will be enough to plant 222 acres next year. Hemp Inc. will use the harvest to produce hemp lumber such as 2x4s which are made up of hemp and recycled plastic, making it stronger, longer lasting and more sustainable than traditional wood.

“We are extremely excited with this relationship as it helps launch another hemp product into the marketplace for our new, clean and green sustainable and regenerative American agricultural and industrial revolution,” Hemp Inc. CEO Craig Perlowin said.

Hemp, Inc.’s Arizona 2021 Hemp Grow

In Arizona, Hemp Inc. is preparing to grow hemp and kenaf on 11 acres at its Veterans Village Kins Community in Golden Valley. Darren Reed, Hemp Inc.’s primary grower, is overseeing the grow using the same cultivars Wyoming is using (HLIANA, HLESIA and HLUKHIVS’KI). According to Reed, planting will start by the end of this week with an expected harvest by the middle to end of September. 

“Right now, we’re laying the groundwork—sifting, plowing the field and fertilizing the soil,” Reed said. “We’ll be testing to see which cultivar will yield the best results.”

Hemp Inc.’s Oregon 2021 Hemp Grow

In Oregon, Hemp Inc. is partnering with Natural Blum Farm to grow hemp this year using one of the most sought after cultivars from the Crawford Brothers (White CBG Seedless). According to oregoncbdseeds.com, the White CBG Seedless is “revered for its large dense flowers and gorgeous bag appeal, and exhibits a stronger, more diesel-filled nose and bumped-up yields. With added essential oil production, its seedless frosted-white flowers also gain more stickiness than the original.”

“The Crawford Brothers are some of my heroes in the hemp industry,” said Bruce Perlowin, chief visionary consultant to Hemp Inc. “They’re in the top 3 percent of people in the industry who actually know what they’re doing. Unfortunately, it’s been a huge learning curve, which I’ve seen translate into a lot of sweat and tears. This is one reason Hemp Inc. has the Hemp University and Consultant divisions to educate as many people as we can,”

Curt Gerbers, the president and CEO of Natural Blum, said he is excited to be partnering with Hemp Inc. and expects the cultivar he’s using to yield a nice crop. The team is currently prepping the soil to plant the first week in June and expects to harvest sometime in September.

Natural Blum is a health and wellness company that offers a wide range of CBD and CBG products. Its best sellers include: CBD flower; CBD oil; CBD pre-rolls; CBG flower; CBG oil; CBG pre-rolls; CBD distillate/isolates; CBD edibles; and CBG balms/creams. Visit Natural Blum for more info here. 

“We are excited to be working with Hemp Inc. at our Natural Blum Farms King of Hemp Store in Boulder, Colo., which will be opening soon, showcasing both Natural Blum and Hemp Inc. products,” Gerbers said.

Moreover, Hemp Inc. is making its King of Hemp line available at other retail stores across America. For those who prefer shopping online, King of Hemp products are currently available at NaturalExposureCBD.com.

Included in the King of Hemp line are items such as Bubba Kush hemp, CBD pre-rolls, fortified CBD pre-rolls, CBD and CBG caviar and Moon Rocks, as well as Diamonds, which are products on the market that contain 96%-98.7% CBD.

To learn more, go to the King of Hemp website here.

The average dispensary in Las Vegas pulls in about $2 million in revenue per month, while larger stores have reported up to $10 million in single-month sales. Even in 2020, amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, legal cannabis statewide in Nevada clocked $789 million in sales. And prospective business owners want in: State-issued licenses have traded hands for as much as $20 million each.

Owning a cannabis company in the Silver State can be an incredibly lucrative endeavor. But for all of the Green Rush’s successes—80 operating dispensaries, 158 grow houses and 110 production facilities—still only one company has a Black woman running the show from the top.

On the remote east side of Sin City, just before houses and roads give way to miles of desert sand, a mom-and-pop-style cannabis store serves thousands of mostly local residents. Top Notch The Health Center, styled as Top Notch THC next to a bright green medical cross on its cream-colored building, welcomes a broad customer base.

Kema Ogden is one of three Top Notch owners and still the only Black woman able to make such a claim in Nevada. Unlike most of her counterparts in the industry, who have sold off their marijuana empires for up to $300 million, Ogden has held onto her dispensary. She’s also still regularly involved in the day-to-day operations.

“We’ve always been focused on being a grassroots company and being a part of the local community,” she said. “The community supports us back, and those relationships that we’ve built over the years really help keep us grounded.”

A former fitness trainer and philanthropist, Ogden would have called you crazy a decade ago if you told her that part of her future would be dealing legal weed. The wife of NFL Hall-of-Famer Jonathan Ogden and mother of two has always had a heart for wellness and helping others. But her humanitarian endeavors had always taken more traditional structures, like a family foundation that runs sports and fitness programs as well as a nonprofit hospital that serves uninsured and low-income families.

With marijuana, she gets the best of both worlds: promoting wellness and making a pretty penny doing it.

“Of course, this is a business for us and we’re always considering opportunities to expand and reach more people,” she said. “But cannabis has become a healthy part of a holistic wellness approach for a lot of our customers.”

Small and Friendly, but Not a Boutique

Top Notch is easily one of the state’s smallest dispensaries, with only 1,500 square feet of retail space. Yet the store is anything but a boutique. It carries over 1,600 cannabis products, including hard-to-find medical specialties like Rick Simpson Oil and patient-grade edibles featuring up to eight times more THC than the state’s limit for recreational products.

Its massive selection ranks Top Notch near the top of all dispensaries in the sheer number of items consumers can choose from. Ogden attributed her store’s large supply to remembering why she and partners got into the business in the first place.

“We try to stay patient-orientated because that’s ultimately why we’re here,” she said. “There’s enough money to be made on retail customers where you can still serve the people out there that really need cannabis to make their lives better.”

Unlike just about every other cannabis store in town, Ogden makes her budtenders available for one-on-one consultations from the time a customer steps into the waiting area to when they walk out the exit. Picture a doctor’s office: the nurse opens the door to the waiting room and calls your name, then walks alongside you before sitting down to discuss your needs. Top Notch doesn’t have licensed medical professionals, but the patient process is otherwise identical.

A Family Atmosphere

For many of the 65 employees at Top Notch, working at the dispensary has been a calling fulfilled. Interviewed employees said their jobs are altruistic in the sense that they can advise shoppers seeking physical and mental support on the plant’s benefits for their ailments.

While most cannabis stores across the Vegas Valley have seen their fair share of turnover and turmoil amidst lucrative ownership changes and restructuring, five of Top Notch’s original six employees continue to work at the dispensary to this day.

Lashawn Griego moved down to Vegas from Denver when the store first opened in late 2015. A former kindergarten teacher and occupational health professional, Griego credits Ogden for creating a family-like atmosphere for employees to thrive.

Griego, who like Ogden is a Black woman, started as a greeter at Top Notch’s front door. In six years, she’s worked her way up to being the store’s general manager and now oversees all of the store’s other employees.

Courtesy of Top Notch THC

“I’ve never really stopped to think about my own accomplishments because this is a company I worked hard to grow in,” Griego said. “We’re all laid back and I don’t look at myself as being a caliber above anyone else here. If we’re slammed, I’ll jump in as a budtender. I’ll get behind the desk and I’ll answer the phones. I’ll be security if they need me to.”

Griego, 49, credits Ogden for helping her ascend to a career she otherwise wouldn’t have realized.

“She just encourages and motivates you and gets you to where you want to be,” Griego said. “She saw value in me before I saw it in myself.”

Blazing a Trail for Others

A January 2021 report from the state’s Cannabis Compliance Board showed Nevada’s marijuana industry is pretty diverse as a whole. Over 38% of people involved in the industry are women, a quarter are Hispanic and nearly 11 percent are Black or African American. The percentage breakdowns for race are relatively consistent with the state’s population of 3.2 million people.

A closer look at the report, though, shows most of the women and minority stakeholders skew toward the bottom levels of the totem pole—think receptionists, budtenders and security. At the top, white men account for nearly three-quarters of company owners.

Previous state initiatives designed to level the ownership playing field have essentially been nothing more than lip service from politicians to underrepresented groups, Ogden said. 2017 regulations incentivizing companies to add women and minorities as owners, executives or board members gave way to a host of new “sham boards” in which minorities received new fancy-sounding titles but had no real impact on the companies they worked for.

Still, Ogden insists there’s hope for the future. Recently appointed by Nevada’s governor to a 12-member Cannabis Advisory Commission, she pointed to a bill at this year’s state legislature that would let cannabis lounges open. The bill would also allow for entertainment operators to apply for permits so patrons could smoke at festivals and music concerts.

The new permits won’t be capped by the state. And less barriers to entry means more minority owners will have a shot at owning a cannabis business.

“Equality is something I’m very passionate about, and the ideas we have out there now are steps in the right direction,” Ogden said. “When we start getting more diversity at the ownership table, I think this industry will flourish in ways we’ve never seen before.”

 

Hemp growing is a passionate endeavor for many farmers. With thousands of potential uses including sustainable alternatives to plastic, fossil fuels, and building materials, growers are eager to expand their hemp acreage to stay ahead of the curve in a burgeoning market. 

Unlike Canada and China, however, the U.S. does not have a consistent hemp infrastructure to get products from field to market, which leaves much of this process to growers. Scaling up hemp operations—whether for grain, fiber or CBD—requires that growers be knowledgeable of market trends, infrastructure requirements, and understand their appetite for risk. 

Know the Market and Find a Buyer 

In 2019, an estimated 250,000 acres of hemp were grown by U.S. farmers—nearly four times as much as in 2018. Prices for CBD hemp in particular plummeted; Whitney Economics shared survey results showing 65% of hemp farmers did not have a buyer lined up for their crop in 2019. Before planting any crop, it’s wise not only to understand the current market demand for your crop or finished product, but also to find someone willing to buy it. 

Industrial grain and fiber have a stronger domestic market than CBD because of their wide application for textiles, food and animal care products like feed and bedding. Yet there is still uncertainty in the regulatory market for cannabidiol hemp. Dan Dolgin, the co-founder of Eaton Hemp and JD Farms in upstate New York, recalls the gold rush for CBD hemp in the past few years which resulted in a saturated market. Dolgin and co-founder Mark Justh knew that to grow their operations successfully, they needed to carve out their niche in the marketplace. So, they took their organic farming experience and started a vertically integrated hemp brand specializing in organic premium hemp snack and pet care products. 

Creating a vertically integrated, niche brand is one way that hemp growers can scale their operations, but this approach comes with its assortment of high costs and investments such as extracting, bottling, promotion and marketing. It’s important to have a good understanding if there is a niche in the CBD market you can tap into, before planting extensive acres of hemp. “It’s a difficult industry to enter if you don’t know the landscape and do your research,” warns Dolgin. 

Creating a brand isn’t a realistic or necessary option for all farmers, which is why seasoned hemp growers strongly encourage hemp farmers to lock down a buyer before planting. And don’t expect buyers to come to you unbidden for your grain, fiber or cannabidiol hemp. Even as hemp increases in popularity, it’s going to take concerted effort to ensure a confident relationship with a buyer.

“Be prepared to hit the phones and internet and do sales. There are Facebook groups, WhatsApp groups, Instagram, and LinkedIn,” suggests Allan Gandelman, co-founder of New York Hemp Oil (NYHO). “You have to use all of the resources out there to try to find a good connection and a good buyer.” 

Establish Infrastructure 

Planting is the easy part, says Gandelman. But those plants grow into a heavy, cumbersome crop that needs to be harvested, transported to a facility and processed. Scaling up your operations from a few dozen to 75 acres, for example, requires an infrastructure that can support the subsequent increase in labor, machinery, land use, harvesting and processing. 

“Each [hemp] plant could weigh fifty pounds wet. There might be 1,800 or 2,000 plants per acre. You’re talking about a lot of pounds, a lot of wet weight, a lot of labor harvesting and trucking into facilities and drying. There's just a lot of infrastructure requirements for that scale,” says Gandelman. “It's easy to plant fifteen acres [of CBD hemp]. It's very hard to harvest fifteen acres.” 

Grain and fiber production requires tillage equipment, planter drills, cultivation and harvesting equipment and drying and storage facilities. Grain and fiber hemp do not incur as steep of a cost as CBD hemp because commercial processes such as those for soy or wheat can often be used, according to Dolgin. However, growing your operations will require more labor in terms of machine management and potentially more square footage in facility space to dry and store your crop. If you are growing higher-quality fiber for textiles, for example, your facilities will also need to be protected to ensure the quality of your crop, which may come at a higher cost.

NYHO specializes in full-spectrum CBD hemp oil. This means that Gandelman’s farm team is in the field everyday checking each plant to ensure its high quality. After harvest, their 230-acre organic farm operation requires more than 40,000 square feet of climate-controlled space to dry hemp. Scaling up means making sure that you have the labor available to manage more crops as well as enough space for drying and storage. 

Securing a processor or processing facility is also essential to properly scaling your operations. Transportation costs alone can reduce the profitability of your hemp crop, according to Penn State Extension, if a processing facility is not close by. Processing your crop yourself is an option, but securing enough square footage might be a tall task. There are processors around the country, like Gandelman’s, who are willing to process a farmer’s crop for a fee and turn it into oil or a finished product on the farmer’s behalf, but you’ll need to consider the cost of transport. 

If you do not have a processing facility, contracting with an industrial hemp processor before planting season will make sure you don’t have crop wasting away in your storage barn. Establishing your infrastructure will help you understand the costs associated with expanding your hemp production: labor cost, field maintenance, machine management, transportation, facilities and processing. Penn State Extension has created sample budgets for hemp grain and fiber growers that are useful in estimating many costs from seed to market. 

Manage Risk 

“Farms can survive small mistakes, but not big ones. So, it’s important for farmers to understand their own appetite for risk,” says Dolgin.

Even if you have a buyer in place, weather volatility can still impact the success of a crop, which Dolgin experienced firsthand. After a successful harvest of thirty acres of grain and fiber hemp, JD Farms quadrupled their output the following year, which was subsequently wiped out by a drought and a deluge of rain.  

Managing risk requires having a backup plan or a security net such as a contract that will cover the costs of damaged or lost crops. For growers who also have a product brand, Dolgin encourages having redundancy in your supply as you scale operations. Having more than one source of hemp will ensure that you can still get supply for your brand if your crop is lost due to weather, pests, or disease.

Losing any amount of crop to a damaging weather event can be devastating. That’s why Kaelan Castetter, director of policy analysis at Castetter Cannabis Group, took a lower-risk approach by expanding operations across different climate zones in New York, instead of concentrating the company’s crop on contiguous fields. Castetter and his team worked with fifteen farms ranging from two to thirty-five acres to grow their crop. If one field experienced hardship, there were several other fields that could yield a successful crop. Spreading out your expanded acreage can help mitigate risks associated with weather volatility. 

Dolgin and Gandelman suggest growing hemp as part of an agricultural portfolio, not an all-in investment, to mitigate risk. 

“People should be doing this as a diversified crop. The people who are successful, they've just added hemp to their rotation. They haven’t gone out and bought a whole brand new farm and invested millions of dollars in a monocultural crop,” says Gandelman. “I think diversity is key and being able to do multiple things.” 

Take It Slow 

The potential uses for all parts of the hemp plant, from fiber for clothes to oil for wellness products, can have growers eager to cash in. Still, experienced growers suggest taking it slow when scaling up your hemp operations.

“Take the next few years, and plan out how you can grow hemp in a way that's going to teach you the most productive way to grow hemp at scale,” says Castetter. “Learn how to grow hemp at scale and do it in a way that you can afford to lose everything you invest in that crop. When the demand is really there, which I do believe it will be there in the next three or four years, you are ready to go and you can produce it in a productive way and a reliable way.”

It will take time for government regulations and domestic demand to reflect what growers already know: hemp is a powerful plant that has the ability to change the landscape of many industries. Know the market, secure a buyer or brand, establish an infrastructure to support your expansion, and be prepared to manage risk so that when the demand increases, you have taken the appropriate steps to scale your hemp production successfully.

 

The Mississippi Supreme Court ruled Friday that the voice of its people, who voted in favor of legalizing medical cannabis by more than a two-thirds majority in the November 2020 election, is not enough to influence policy.

The ballot measure, Initiative 65, would have required the Mississippi State Department of Health to adopt rules and regulations for a medical cannabis program by July 1, 2021, and begin issuing medical patient cards and treatment center licenses by Aug. 15, 2021. The ballot results were certified by Secretary of State Michael Watson.

But the state’s high court overruled those election results by a 6-3 decision. Justice Josiah D. Coleman wrote the majority opinion.

The Supreme Court’s ruling stems from Section 273(3) of the Mississippi Constitution, which states that signatures from each congressional district for a ballot initiative cannot exceed one-fifth of the total number of signatures required to qualified an initiative petition for placement upon the ballot. In short, the section was designed to ensure an even number of signatures was gathered from each congressional district for geographic uniformity.

However, after the 2000 Census, Mississippi dropped from five districts to four districts—making Section 273(3)’s one-fifth requirement mathematically at odds with the political structure of the state’s electorate. Language dealing with the initiative process was never updated to “one-fourth” in that section.

“Whether with intent, by oversight, or for some other reason, the drafters of section 273(3) wrote a ballot-initiative process that cannot work in a world where Mississippi has fewer than five representatives in Congress,” Coleman said in his majority opinion. “To work in today’s reality, it will need amending—something that lies beyond the power of the Supreme Court. We grant the petition, reverse the secretary of state’s certification of Initiative 65, and hold that any subsequent proceedings on it are void.”

The Mississippi Supreme Court heard oral arguments on the constitutionality of the voter-approved medical cannabis measure on April 14, after Madison Mayor Mary Hawkins Butler filed a lawsuit that challenged the initiative process. Butler first filed the complaint in late October, just one week before Election Day.

Proponents of Initiative 65 said their petition met the requirements set by the state constitution and by a 2009 opinion from former Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood, The Associated Press reported in October. That opinion concluded that the general purpose of the geographic distribution requirement for signatures was to help assure that citizens from one part of the state did not use the initiative process to the detriment of those in another.

Meeting that geographic objective, 74% of Mississippians passed Initiative 65 at the polls, winning in all 82 counties, according to Mississippi Medical Marijuana Association (3MA), a proponent of the reform effort.

“The Mississippi Supreme Court just overturned the will of the people of Mississippi,” 3MA Executive Director Ken Newburger said in a statement. “Patients will now continue the suffering that so many Mississippians voted to end. The Court ignored existing case law and prior decisions. Their reasoning ignores the intent of the constitution and takes away people’s constitutional right. It’s a sad day for Mississippi when the Supreme Court communicates to a vast majority of the voters that their vote doesn’t matter.”

Section 273(3) states the people reserve unto themselves the power to propose and enact constitutional amendments by initiative.

As recent as 2011—roughly a decade after Mississippi dropped from five to four congressional districts—voters passed a pair of ballot initiatives that were never challenged in the court of law based on Section 273(3). That year, Mississippians voted in favor of Initiative 27, which requires residents to show government-issued photo identification before voting, and in favor of Initiative 31, which limits the use of eminent domain—the right of a government to expropriate private property for public use.

Those two ballot measures were not mentioned by the Mississippi Supreme Court on Friday in its ruling to overturn the 2020 election results of Initiative 65.

In the dissenting opinion, Justice James D. Maxwell said he strongly disagreed that the secretary of state acted in an unconstitutional manner by placing Initiative 65 on the ballot.  

“I am also hard pressed to see how a federal court’s almost 20-year-old injunction, aimed solely at federal congressional elections, has now somehow unintentionally destroyed Mississippi’s 28 constitutional citizen-based ballot-initiative process,” he said. “But that is exactly what the majority is saying.”

Furthermore, Maxwell said that while Mississippi’s congressional districts were adjusted federally for representation in the U.S. House of Representatives, Section 23-15-1037 of Mississippi Code of 1972—a state law that defines five congressional districts—was never updated following the 2000 Census. Therefore, according to state law, Mississippi still has five congressional districts.

That said, the federal shift to four congressional districts “does not consider, speak to, or in any way preclude Mississippi’s ability to continue to use the five statutory congressional districts for other purposes—including the secretary of state’s use of these five districts to determine if Section 273(3)’s signature requirement has been met,” Maxwell said.

According to Mississippians for Compassionate Care, an organization that helped push Initiative 65 to passage in November, the voter-approved measure would allow residents affected by any of 22 conditions, such as cancer, chronic pain or epilepsy, to qualify as medical cannabis patients.

A fiscal analysis by Mississippi’s Legislative Budget Office estimated the first year of the medical program would cost the state roughly $11.1 million, according to the organization. In the following years, the program will bring in around $10.7 million in overall annual revenue, which would be required to go back into the program.

Following the Supreme Court’s decision on Friday, Marijuana Policy Project Deputy Director Matthew Schweich issued the following statement:

“Today is a cruel and tragic day for sick and suffering people in Mississippi. The state’s Supreme Court has issued a deeply flawed ruling to overturn Amendment 65, the medical cannabis law that voters overwhelmingly approved in the November 2020 election. As a result, tens of thousands of Mississippians with debilitating health conditions will be denied safe, legal access to something that can alleviate their pain and improve their quality of life. Instead, they will once again be treated as criminals under the law. To add insult to injury, this decision not only nullifies the will of hundreds of thousands of voters, it also effectively eliminates Mississippians’ right to bring forward ballot initiatives to amend their state’s constitution. The legislature must take action to fix the ballot initiative requirements and honor the will of their constituents by enacting Amendment 65 into law through the legislative process. Our hearts are broken for the patients in Mississippi who need access to medical cannabis, as well as their families who will continue to watch their loved ones needlessly suffer. We stand with them. The fight for a compassionate medical cannabis law in Mississippi will continue.”