In 2020, Mississippi became the 35th state, and the second in the Deep South, to approve medical use of marijuana. But Initiative 65, which was favored by three-quarters of voters, never took effect, thanks to a legal requirement for ballot measure signatures that was impossible to satisfy. After the Mississippi Supreme Court overturned the initiative, the state legislature responded by independently approving a medical marijuana bill, which Gov. Tate Reeves signed into law yesterday.
The broad, bipartisan support for medical marijuana in a deep-red state shows how far the rejection of pot prohibition has spread since California became the first state to legalize medical marijuana in 1996. That reality seems to have sunk in almost everywhere except on Capitol Hill.
