Photo: The Daily Mississippian.
Mississippi is one of many states that has introduced bills regarding the legalization of marijuana for medical use.
Medical marijuana is currently legal in 20 states and Washington D.C., and with Washington state and Colorado recently legalizing the recreational use of the drug, the subject is at the height of media visibility.
In an interview with WAPT News in Jackson earlier this month, Gov. Phil Bryant said Colorado is more liberal in its way of thinking than Mississippi is; however, neighboring conservative states such as Alabama, Tennessee and Georgia have begun negotiating amendments to their existing marijuana laws.
Despite the governor’s opposition, change has begun to make itself present in the Magnolia State.
Six years in a row, state Sen. Deborah Dawkins (D-Pass Christian) has tenaciously pursued the legalization of marijuana for medical use in the Mississippi House of Representatives. However, none of her proposed bills has made it through committees for a vote.
“Change is hard for people in Mississippi,” Dawkins told The Daily Mississippian. “Six or eight years ago, legislators were afraid to even say the word ‘marijuana.’ The idea is becoming more mainstream all over the country, and although we move slowly here, it is moving in that direction.”
Her passion for fighting for medical marijuana legislation comes from personal experiences. She said that 20 years ago, her father died from lung cancer, and pain control for him was a large problem.
“If you are not old enough to have had a good friend or a family member die in a situation of serious pain, if you live long enough, you will,” Dawkins said.
Then another family tragedy occurred for Dawkins just last year.
This past Thanksgiving, her brother, a resident of Texas, was out riding his motorcycle when he was struck by another vehicle. The accident caused him to break both of his legs, which resulted in multiple compound fractures.
Dawkins said that even after eight surgical procedures, the possibility of amputation for one of his legs is very high. To cope with the pain from his critical injuries Dawkins’ brother is now supplementing his regular pharmaceutical medication with what Dawkins called, “herbal supplements.”
“That kind of pain is not something that you can just take a pill or shot for,” Dawkins said. “There were a couple of times where we were up all night, and he was in horrible pain. I would have given him anything to try and help him and just not have to see him like that.”
Dawkins said her proposed bill is very preliminary, and, after seeing some of the descriptive legal language in Colorado’s recreational law, she will most likely update it for next year.
“You have to remember what most state legislatures are made up of, and you only have to turn on C-SPAN to see that the main composites of these bodies are old, white guys. They’re just not in touch with the average person,” Dawkins said. “So it’s kind of left to the younger people, and people like me to push for change because those old, white guys, they really just are not very progressive-thinking.”
Mississippi decriminalized possession of small amounts of marijuana. Though the use of recreational and medical marijuana is still illegal in the state of Mississippi, The University of Mississippi’s National Institute on Drug Abuse-funded Marijuana Project is the only facility in the country to grow the plant for medicinal research purposes.
The program began in 1968 and is the longest-running National Institutes of Health contract in the country.
“The high-quality marijuana grown at The University of Mississippi is supplied to the National Institute on Drug Abuse Drug Supply Program,” said Don Stanford, assistant director of the Research Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences. “This program provides the marijuana and its constituents to researchers that study their harmful and beneficial effects.”
Stanford said that cannabis has been used medicinally for thousands of years. The most common uses today are to reduce nausea and vomiting in chemotherapy patients and people with AIDS, and to treat pain and muscle spasticity.
“It’s just a real dichotomy. It doesn’t make any sense,” Dawkins said. “Most of the testing that has been done all over the country — that marijuana comes from Ole Miss. It’s just hypocritical for us to have that going on, and then not allow our citizens to benefit from it.”
However, not all Mississippi citizens believe legalization would be beneficial to our state. Keith Davis, captain of the Lafayette County Metro Narcotics Unit, said the only thing medical marijuana would bring is more work for his unit.
“We’d be working more forged-script cases,” Davis said. “You know, if somebody is receiving a prescription for marijuana, then you’re going to have people that are trying to fraudulently obtain it through different means.” Davis said the black market is unwavering and will still be present even if marijuana becomes legal.
“I think it’d make crime go up,” he said. “I think it’d also have a huge social and economic impact on society. How much sickness and illness is it going to create long term? I think it’d destroy society.”
But Dawkins disagrees.
“The other thing that happens when you legalize it, even just for medical purposes, is that the stigma and the criminal prosecutions do tend to subside,” Dawkins said. “That’s another thing I maintain, we just cannot afford to keep putting people in jail for something that is a nonviolent crime.”
Over the summer, Dawkins will be attending legislative meetings with people from across the country. There, she plans to get insight from other state officials who have succeeded in the medical marijuana legislative process and to continue adamantly pushing for change in her home state.
“Have you ever heard of anyone dying of an overdose of marijuana? It just doesn’t happen,” Dawkins said. “We have everything to gain, and nothing to lose from trying it. I’m just going to keep working on it.”
— Lacey Russell
llrusse2@go.olemiss.edu
