A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by a Mississippi medical marijuana dispensary owner challenging the state’s ban on cannabis advertising. In the legal action, Clarence Cocroft II, the owner of Tru Source Medical Cannabis, argued that Mississippi’s regulations prohibiting cannabis advertising in any media amounted to unconstitutional censorship of the industry.

But U.S. District Judge Michael P. Mills disagreed with Cocroft and dismissed the lawsuit on Monday. In his ruling, Mills wrote that because the possession of marijuana remains illegal at the federal level, it is not a “lawful activity” that is protected by the U.S. Constitution like some other forms of commercial speech.

Cocroft opened his dispensary in Olive Branch, Mississippi after the state legislature legalized medical marijuana in 2022. In his lawsuit, he argues that he has faced difficulty reaching potential customers because of the state’s ban on advertising by cannabis businesses. 

The judge, however, said that overturning Mississippi’s ban on cannabis advertising would be a “drastic intrusion upon state sovereignty.”

“This is particularly true considering the fact that, by legalizing marijuana to any degree, the Mississippi Legislature has gone further than Congress itself has been willing to go,” Mills wrote in his ruling, according to a report from the Associated Press. “In light of this fact, on what basis would a federal court tell the Mississippi Legislature that it was not entitled to dip its toe into the legalization of marijuana, but, instead, had to dive headfirst into it?”

State Sued Over Advertising Ban

Cocroft is represented by the Institute for Justice, a nonprofit libertarian law firm. The lawsuit names the Mississippi Department of Health, Department of Revenue and Alcoholic Beverage Control Bureau as defendants in the legal action.

In the suit, Corcroft maintains that Mississippi’s ban on cannabis advertising prevents him from reaching out to customers via television, radio or print ads. He is even forbidden from placing ads on billboards that he owns. 

The judge ruled that the state cannot prohibit cannabis businesses from displaying products on their websites or from using “appropriate signs” on their businesses. The authority to enact other restrictions, however, lies with the state Health Department, which bans dispensaries from advertising or marketing “in any media.” Corcroft’s legal team says the ban amounts to unconstitutional censorship.

“When Mississippi legalized medical marijuana, it relinquished its power to censor speech by medical marijuana businesses,” said Ari Bargil, an Institute for Justice attorney. “If a product is legal to sell, then it is legal to talk about selling it.”

Corcroft’s suit argues that a current review of cannabis policy by the Biden administration and presidential pardons for low-level federal marijuana offenses constitute a de facto legalization of cannabis. But while the president has pardoned thousands of people who have been federally convicted of marijuana possession, cannabis remains illegal under federal law. As long as marijuana remains a federally controlled substance, the judge ruled, the states are free to pass laws that restrict advertising by cannabis businesses.

“Plaintiffs thus argue that Congress and President Biden have ‘all but’ made the possession of marijuana lawful, which strikes this court as a tacit admission that it still remains illegal under federal law,” Mills wrote.

In a statement released after the judge’s ruling and dismissal of the case, Corcroft said that Mississippi’s ban on cannabis advertising is a violation of the First Amendment rights of legal businesses. He added that he plans to appeal the judge’s ruling to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

“I’m prepared to fight this fight for as long as it takes,” Cocroft said. “This case is bigger than me and my dispensary – it is about defending the right of everyone to truthfully advertise their legal business in the cannabis industry.”

Although Mississippi’s regulated medical marijuana businesses still face the state’s ban on advertising, Brian Vicente, founding partner of the cannabis and psychedelics law firm Vicente LLP, noted that some states with similar policies have later modified the restrictions.

“Mississippi’s marijuana laws are still new. In most states, we see advertising restrictions lessen over time as states realize that marijuana, including medical marijuana, is a legitimate product that is not only highly regulated but also legal and safe for sale in the state,” Vicente wrote in an email to High Times. “Mississippi needs to consider that, by severely restricting medical marijuana advertising, they are hurting their medical marijuana patients who need access to this important medication. These restrictions significantly impact patients’ accessibility to information about the program and their medication.”

Over-the-counter hemp products in Mississippi are not what they appear to be, according to a Steep Hill Mississippi analysis.

Clarion Ledger reports that Steep Hill Mississippi President and co-founder Cliff Osbon said so-called hemp-derived products that were recently tested contain significant amounts of delta-9 THC and unsafe pesticides. He also said that the products would have failed the Mississippi Department of Health’s standards of medical cannabis as they contain pesticides.

Steep Hill Mississippi is a branch of Steep Hill—an industry leader in cannabis testing and analytics, located throughout the U.S. and Mexico

“On Nov. 27, I personally went around Rankin County (and) went to a number of gas stations and convenience stores and purchased products labeled they contained delta-9 THC, the primary ingredient in marijuana,” Osbon told the Clarion Ledger.

The products are labeled as hemp yet contain what is most likely potent cannabis.

“Reportedly these come from the hemp plant, not the marijuana plant, and remember as such they can have 0.3% THC,” Osbon said. “Our science team and their technicians tested these for potency, and we were staggered by the results we found.”

The 2018 Farm Bill legalized hemp at the federal level, and in doing so, lawmakers accidentally legalized psychoactive compounds like delta-8 THC that are derived from hemp. Only 0.3% of delta-9 THC on a dry-weight basis is allowed. But the products in Mississippi contain delta-9 THC, which isn’t legal in the state.

Lab technicians discovered some products had 30 to 40 times the amount of THC allowed under the Farm Bill. Some of the samples that were tested had 12-14% delta-9 THC, Osbon explained. They also found that some of the samples contain an assortment of banned pesticides such as bifenazate, myclobutanil, metalaxyl, malathion, chlorantraniliprole, diazinon, spinosad, and permethrins.

“We in no way want to encourage anyone who sees this information to go out and access those products because of their questionable safety,” he said. “While merchants may have been told that these products are safe, legal and tested and may have been told they are exempt from the Farm Bill, our testing results call that into question.”

Medical cannabis dispensary operators are on the same side and said these sketchy hemp products are a threat to lab-tested cannabis that patients depend on.

“These findings undermine patient access to safe and effective medicine, which in-turn undermines the entire medical marijuana program,” Williams said. “There are many Mississippians that have devoted their lives to supporting this program … it undermines their efforts as well.”

Mississippi’s Medical Cannabis Program

Mississippi hemp farmers recently pivoted from hemp to medical cannabis, High Times reported last March.

Also last March, Mississippi lawmakers approved a bill that makes changes to the state’s Medical Cannabis Act, the bill to legalize medical cannabis that was passed by the legislature in 2022. 

House Bill 1158 was signed by Gov. Tate Reeves on March 27, 2022. The bill makes clarifications to the state’s medical cannabis program, and it also includes language designed to prevent regulators from passing rules that do not comply with the state’s medical cannabis statute.

The bill makes investigations by state agencies, including citations issued by the Department of Health, confidential until an investigation into the matter has been completed. An earlier version of the bill kept such records out of public view indefinitely, but some senators argued that keeping such material off the public record for any length of time is not acceptable.

Medical cannabis sales launched on January 25, a little less than a year after Republican Gov. Tate Reeves signed a measure into law. 

“The ‘medical marijuana bill’ has consumed an enormous amount of space on the front pages of the legacy media outlets across Mississippi over the last three-plus years,” Reeves said in a statement that he posted on X, formerly known as Twitter. “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. There are also those who really want a recreational marijuana program that could lead to more people smoking and less people working, with all of the societal and family ills that that brings.”

The medical cannabis bill was a source of intense disagreement within the Mississippi legislature, and between lawmakers and Reeves, who was adamant about imposing tight restrictions on any law that emerged.

The owner of a cannabis dispensary in Mississippi has filed a lawsuit alleging that state laws which prevent him from advertising his business violate his First Amendment rights.

Clarence Cocroft II of Olive Branch, Mississippi is the owner of Tru Source Medical Cannabis. According to the Associated Press, Cocroft filed a lawsuit Tuesday because he says regulations put in place by the Mississippi Department of Health have made it inordinately difficult for him to run his business. 

Mississippi legalized cannabis for medicinal purposes in 2022 but the laws only allow for people with certain “debilitating conditions” to obtain a recommendation. The Mississippi Department of Health opted to ban cannabis providers from advertising in any way shape or form. Cocroft said this is a violation of his constitutional rights as a business owner. 

“All I want to do, like any other business owner, is have the opportunity to advertise. If I pay taxes in this business, which I do, I should be able to advertise,” Cocroft said at a news conference. “All I’m asking from this state is to provide us with the same liberty that they’ve provided other businesses.”

According to the Mississippi Department of Health website, Mississippi cannabis businesses are allowed to have a sign on their store and have a website with a list of products available but they cannot otherwise participate in any form of communication that could be perceived as advertising. An attorney for Cocroft, Katrin Marquez told the Associated Press that this constitutes unlawful censorship.

“Under the ban, Clarence can’t advertise in any media. He cannot place ads in newspapers or magazines, on television or radio, or even on billboards that he already owns,” Marquez said. “The First Amendment does not allow a state to completely censor a legal business. If it is legal to sell a product, it is legal to talk about that product.”

The list goes on. Legally operating cannabis dispensaries in Mississippi are not allowed to display products in their window, not allowed to send out mass text messages or emails. They can’t offer discounts, promotions or deals of any kind nor can they give away free product or any kind of samples. They also can’t put their business name on an Adopt-a-Highway sign or an electronic interstate sign.

Cocroft told the Associated Press that when he started his business, he actually set aside some money for advertising and even bought high-profile billboards in high-volume areas of the state which he has since been forced to lease out to other businesses. 

“It’s simply unfair that every other legal business in Mississippi is allowed to advertise, while I have to rely on word of mouth,” Cocroft said.

Many states with legal adult-use or medical cannabis markets have enacted regulations restricting cannabis advertising. Most states opt to apply certain restrictions on cannabis advertising on public broadcasts to ensure that the majority of the audience who will see the ad will be of legal consumption age but the particularities vary state to state.

Most of these restrictions are likely not First Amendment Violations based on comparable Supreme Court cases related to tobacco and pornography advertising which have determined that reasonable time, place and manner restrictions are not First Amendment violations, but few states have outright banned cannabis advertising to the degree that Mississippi has. Louisiana, Arkansas and Alabama have similar laws banning cannabis advertising through public mediums, but Marquez argued to the Associated Press that Mississippi’s laws are harsher still. 

“The state government cannot simultaneously authorize the legal sale of a product or service, while forbidding the truthful advertising of said product,” Marquez said. “No law, state or federal, justifies the censorship in this case.”

According to the Associated Press, Cocroft is represented in this lawsuit by the Institute for Justice and his lawsuit is specifically targeted at leadership in the Mississippi Department of Health, Department of Revenue and Alcoholic Beverage Control Bureau. The language of the lawsuit alleges that state regulations unfairly target legally operating cannabis  businesses trying to utilize their First Amendment rights to spread truthful, commercial speech. 

Mississippi state law allows cannabis patients to obtain 3.5 grams of cannabis once per day, six days per week. The list of qualifying conditions is short and limited to illnesses like cancer, HIV and Parkinson’s disease. A full list can be found here. 

The University of Mississippi, commonly known as Ole Miss, will begin offering a masters degree program for medical cannabis research.

According to the Mississippi Clarion-Ledger, Ole Miss will begin offering the program in late 2024. The online-only program through the Ole Miss School of Pharmacy will focus on the development of medical cannabis products as well as dietary supplements, both of which have experienced an increased pool of users in recent years both in Mississippi and across the country.

Director of online graduate programs in the biomedical sciences department, David Colby, told the Clarion-Ledger that the program will be more focused on students who want to learn about dietary supplements and how they’re made, including but not limited to medical cannabis products. 

“The purpose is to provide advanced training for people who are seeking employment or want to advance their current jobs in dietary supplements, which could be herbal products or medical cannabis,” Colby said to the Clarion-Ledger. “We’re more focused on providing the skills for people to be successful in the industry.”

Ole Miss has actually been involved in cannabis research since the 1960’s. According to the school’s website, Ole Miss first built a cannabis grow facility for research purposes in 1968. By 1976 the university was growing over 100 varieties of cannabis and they are known today as one of the leading American universities when it comes to cannabis research. 

“We’re a national leader in dietary supplements and medical cannabis,” Colby said. “And now we’re going to fully build a curriculum across our university to serve our students.”

The new program will be separate from the already-established Ole Miss growing facilities and is intended for people who may already be in the medical cannabis or dietary supplement industry as well as newcomers to either field. It focuses more on the design aspect of these products than the consumption or use of them, according to the Clarion-Ledger.

Colby told the Clarion-Ledger that he expects the new program will have a large presence of people who are employed in lower level positions in the developing medical cannabis industry or in the long-established yet ever-evolving dietary supplement market who are looking to find a leg up on the competition or acquire technical skills that may lead to career advancement. 

“Since it’s entirely online, we do expect that we will have students that are partially or fully employed, particularly maybe even already fully employed in the industry, but they want to move ahead. So perhaps they’re operating in an entry-level position and they want to move into something with regulatory affairs or something with formulation and manufacturing, or look at more analytical chemistry or [research and development],” Colby said. “They will be able to do that with this degree.”

The program is split into two parts: with one year of study dedicated to learning about dietary supplements and the second year dedicated to medical cannabis. According to the Clarion Ledger, each part of the program has five required courses and is 30 credit hours in total. 

The respective legs of the program will each cover history, pharmacology and toxicology of medical cannabis and dietary supplements, but the cannabis portion of the program looks at the additional factors of  policy and law, formulation and manufacturing, chemistry and standardization, and plant genomics. 

Ole Miss Professor Hayley Prescot, who serves an instructional assistant professor of biomolecular sciences and will be teaching part of the dietary supplements section of the new program, told the Clarion Ledger that these steps toward educating people who work in these fields will hopefully result in a greater understanding of these products from the people who buy them.

“I think by educating the workforce, it will eventually lead to a more informed consumer,” Prescott said, also indicating that her “hope was to be able to answer the ‘why’s’ around a lot of herbal medicine.”

Ole Miss told the Clarion Ledger they are awaiting full accreditation for the new program which they expect to come later this year. The first courses of the new program are currently slated to begin in the Fall semester of 2024. 

Mississippi launched their medical cannabis program in January of this year and the market size has increased month over month since, with $4.4 million in medical cannabis products sold in July alone, according to MjBiz Daily. As of August 23, Mississippi cannabis retailers had sold $15.7 million worth of medical cannabis products.

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A few Mississippi dispensaries were ready to open to customers on Jan. 25. Mississippi Trade Association Executive Director Melvin C. Robinson stood outside one of the state’s licensed dispensaries, The Cannabis Company, to welcome customers. “It’s a very exciting day today. History has been made in Brookhaven,” Robinson said.

The first customer at Brookhaven-based The Cannabis Company was Debbie McDermott. “I do suffer from chronic pain and I have some other issues,” she said about why she became a medical cannabis cardholder. The dispensary experienced a setback due to issues with the METRC point-of-sale system, which caused a two-and-a-half-hour delay before McDermott could purchase her medicine.

The Cannabis Company co-owner Le Anne Penn told The Daily Leader that she changed her career to enter the cannabis industry. “It has been a fun journey. I have enjoyed it. The business will be different from what I was doing before,” Penn said. “I was a body technician for 40 years. I decided to pursue this because I saw the potential in the industry and the need in people. Hopefully this will help people who need it or can’t take opioids or other medicines.”

Other news outlets reported dispensaries selling on Jan. 25 as well, with more expecting to receive their shipments over the weekend.

According to Mississippi Medical Marijuana Association Executive Director Ken Newburger, the launch of this program has been a long time coming. “We have been working since 2018 to get medical marijuana in the hands of patients in Mississippi, and it’s surreal to see it finally come to fruition,” said Newburger. “This is only the beginning. More and more businesses will be harvesting, testing, and getting their products on the shelves in the coming months; therefore, more patients will have access to this medicine at certified businesses all across the state.”

Medical cannabis cardholders may purchase up to 3.5 grams per day, six days a week, or a total of 3 ounces every month. Currently, the state allows patients to use medical cannabis if they suffer from one of the approved qualifying conditions. This includes a total of 20 conditions,  such as cancer, Parkinson’s disease, glaucoma, Crohn’s disease, autism, and muscular dystrophy. In addition to that, six more conditions and symptoms qualify as well, including wasting syndrome, severe or intractable nausea, seizures, and severe and persistent muscle spasms, such as those experienced with multiple sclerosis.

Voters originally approved medical cannabis during the election in November 2020 with Initiative 65. In April 2021, the Mississippi Supreme Court allowed opponents of medical cannabis legalization to challenge the vote results, which led to the court striking down Initiative 65 in May, stating that it was constitutionally flawed. Legislators continued to discuss medical cannabis throughout the year, and by September they made a move to re-implement a plan to legalize medical cannabis.

Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves stalled the progress of a new medical cannabis bill in November 2021, but he finally agreed to the details of a new law in January 2022, and signed it in February. “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 said in a press statement. “There are also those who really want a recreational marijuana program that could lead to more people smoking and less people working, with all of the societal and family ills that that brings.”

In October 2022, the state has issued provisional licenses to 491 work permits, 138 dispensaries, 47 cultivators, eight processors, four transportation businesses, three “disposal companies,” and two testing facilities. 

As of December 2022, more than 2,311 applications were submitted, with 1,321 approved, and 990 still being processed. As of Jan. 23, more than 1,700 patients have been approved.

Behind closed doors, Mississippi’s eight-person medical cannabis office is struggling against its workload.

The Health Department office charged by the Legislature with running Mississippi’s new medical marijuana program is steeped in disorganization: agents rarely visit cultivation sites, application backlogs reach hundreds deep, and lags in communication with licensees often stretch on for weeks, a Mississippi Today investigation found.

Business owners feel frustrated, unheard and worried that the millions of dollars they invested — and the tens of thousands they paid in fees to the state — could go up in smoke.

“The state threw them to the wolves,” cultivator Joel Harper said of the fledgling marijuana office. “They should have paid the money to bring in professionals, even a third-party consultant. Instead, they’re sending people out into the cannabis world who have no idea about anything cannabis.”

At the center is a handful of workers, tasked with unrolling a massive program without enough staffing to operate efficiently. Cultivators say when they do hear back from the office, the messages are incomplete or inconsistent – especially when it comes to how they construct their farming facilities.

And that’s if they hear back at all. The office already has mountains of unprocessed paperwork.

[Read more at Mississippi Today]

Mississippi’s fledgling medical cannabis program is slowly but surely coming together, with state officials targeting early next year for the opening of the first dispensaries. 

Local news station WLBT reports that “900 Mississippians have already applied and been certified for their medical marijuana cards,” and that there is hope for the first dispensaries to open their doors early next year.

The state began accepting applications for medical cannabis cards in June.

Mississippi legalized a medical cannabis program earlier this year after the state’s Republican governor, Tate Reeves, signed a bill into law.

“The ‘medical marijuana bill’ has consumed an enormous amount of space on the front pages of the legacy media outlets across Mississippi over the last three-plus years,” Reeves said in a statement following the bill signing. “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. There are also those who really want a recreational marijuana program that could lead to more people smoking and less people working, with all of the societal and family ills that that brings.”

The governor’s signature marked the culmination of a multi-year legislative process after voters in the state approved a ballot measure in 2020 to legalize medical marijuana treatment there. 

The state Supreme Court struck down the voter-approved measure, deeming it unconstitutional on a technicality, prompting lawmakers in Mississippi to draft their own medical cannabis proposal. 

Reeves, who was opposed to the 2020 ballot measure, engaged with the legislature on the bill, at one point insisting that lawmakers impose a limit for patients to receive 2.7 grams per day.

The legislation that arrived on his desk earlier this year, however, allowed patients to purchase up to 3.5 grams as many as six times per week. It passed the legislature with a veto-proof majority.

“I have made it clear that the bill on my desk is not the one that I would have written,” Reeves said in his statement at the time. “But it is a fact that the legislators who wrote the final version of the bill (the 45th or 46th draft) made significant improvements to get us towards accomplishing the ultimate goal.”

The governor did, however, applaud a number of provisions in the new law.

“1. Reduces the total amount that any one individual can receive to 3 oz. per month. This one change will reduce the total amount by 40 percent from the original version (I asked for 50 percent). Said differently, there will be hundreds of millions of fewer joints on the streets because of this improvement,” Reeves said at the time. “2. The medical professional can only prescribe within the scope of his/her practice. And they have to have a relationship with the patient. And it requires an in-person visit by the patient to the medical professional. 3. Only an MD or DO can prescribe for kids under 18 and only with the consent of a parent/legal guardian. 4. An MD or DO must prescribe for young adults between the ages of 18-25. 5. The MSDH will promulgate rules regarding packaging and advertising, and I have confidence they will do so in a way that limits the impact on our young people. 6. Prohibits any incentives for the Industry from the Mississippi Development Authority. 7. Protects our churches and schools from having a marijuana dispensary within fewer than 1,000 feet of their location.”

Reeves thanked the lawmakers for their efforts, and expressed hope that “we can put this issue behind us and move on to other pressing matters facing our state.”