Devereaux Galloway downed about 150 prescribed opioid pills monthly after his spinal surgery in 2019. The Gulf War veteran, paralyzed and bedridden after serving his country, also suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder.
“Of course, I was on opioids. The (Department of Veterans’ Affairs) was giving them to me, of course,” he told the Mississippi Free Press on Aug. 28. “And you just do what the doctors tell you: ‘Just take them for pain as needed.’ Well, ‘pain as needed’ was constant. And so, I’m constantly popping these pills, (which) later turned to depression, anxiety, PTSD—a list of other things—weight gain.”
He joined Mississippi’s medical cannabis program in December 2022 and began with Rick Simpson Oil, a potent cannabis concentrate known for its high THC content for treating pain and medical conditions like cancer. Now, he no longer uses any opioids. Though he has no feeling in his right leg, he is able to walk without aid.
“You’re not just out of your world, like ‘What’s going on?’ You just don’t have any pain,” Galloway said, speaking about RSO. “You can feel stuff. Food tastes better. Your hearing is more acute. Smells smell better. It just heightens all the senses.”
The medical-cannabis patient said he no longer uses RSO due to its potency, but still smokes cannabis daily to treat his symptoms. Galloway hosts the 20past4 podcast, where he educates people about medical cannabis. He said he talks to many people in pain who take opioids but are hesitant to use cannabis because of the stigma surrounding the plant.
“Because of medical cannabis in Mississippi, it allowed me another option. Today, I’m proud to say that I don’t take any opioids at all,” Galloway said at a Medical Cannabis Advisory Board meeting on Aug. 28. “Hold up. No, see, I’ve got a lot of other vets that suffered, and they don’t have access because of the stigma associated with cannabis, illegal cannabis use.”
Mississippi Medical Cannabis Association’s 2026 Policy Goals
Henry Crisler, the executive director of the Mississippi Medical Cannabis Association, presented three policy proposals for making medical cannabis more accessible to the Medical Cannabis Advisory Board at its Aug. 28 meeting at the Mississippi Capitol building in Jackson. MMMA is an advocacy organization composed of medical-cannabis operators, advocates and patients that is not associated with the State or Legislature.
He encouraged maintaining strict testing, labeling and packaging requirements for all cannabis products.
The executive director suggested that the Legislature should raise the potency limit for medical-cannabis flower from 30% to 40% and remove potency limits on infused and concentrated products, currently limited to 60%.
“There’s clearly a certain subset of patients within this marketplace that seek a higher dosage or a higher level of relief and those patients can actually currently achieve that level of relief through the products that are available in the marketplace,” Crisler said.
“The problem is (patients are) actually forced to consume more of the product in order to achieve that level of relief that they’re looking for with that 60% potency cap,” he continued. “The point of a concentrate is so that you can consume less of it in order to achieve the desired dose.”
He pointed to another limitation on the program: 35 counties in the state do not have a certified medical-cannabis practitioner. Crisler said the lack of practitioners could make it harder for patients to get their patient card in the first place, but it also creates difficulties when patients have to renew it every year.
Medical-cannabis patients must currently visit a certified medical-cannabis practitioner yearly to get revalidated for the program, but Crisler says the Legislature should change the recertification requirement to every two years.
“For many patients, their underlying diagnosis is not going away,” Crisler said.
He suggested that if a practitioner believes cannabis might be suitable to treat a patient’s condition, then the patient should be able to get a medical-cannabis card. Practitioners should be able to certify patients “for any condition that they believe traditional methods of treatment might be ineffective or less effective,” he said
“We believe that Mississippi practitioners are licensed, trained and capable of determining the best treatment options for their patients without needing to rely on an arbitrary list of conditions determined by a legislature,” Crisler said.
He proposed that a “right-to-try” option should also be available.
“We do think that there are Mississippians that are currently suffering and could find relief through this program if it wasn’t for the qualifying list of conditions leaving their condition out,” Crisler said.
Board member Dr. Minh Duong, an optometrist in Meridian, Mississippi, said he was skeptical of allowing a “free-for-all” medical-cannabis program because of safety and liability concerns. Dr. Randy Easterling, a fellow board member and family physician from Vicksburg, Mississippi, agreed with him.
“Even though it’s not against the law, I’ve been practicing medicine for 40 years and I can’t write something just because I think it’s going to help somebody,” Easterling said at the board meeting. “First of all, the FDA gives some recommendations. Now, you can write things off-label, but you have to be careful with that. There needs to be research and studies outside of that office that says this product at this dose has shown to be effective, not just ‘I think it’ll work.’”
Board Chairman Jeff Webb, a retired public school teacher who co-owns Green Magnolia Dispensaries, suggested forming subcommittees of the medical-cannabis board composed of people involved in the industry, like testers, cultivators, dispensary owners and transporters.
He said the subcommittees could work on fleshing out ideas for the program that the Mississippi State Department of Health could implement to solve everyday problems. Duong suggested that subcommittees could meet every six months via video chat or in person.
Mississippi House Rep. Lee Yancey, R-Brandon, told the Mississippi Free Press on Oct. 8 that he has talked to Mississippi State Health Officer Dr. Dan Edney about a right-to-try provision for the medical-cannabis program. The lawmaker said having the Mississippi State Department of Health make that recommendation to the medical-cannabis board and the Mississippi Legislature would carry more weight than if Yancey had told his colleagues the idea came from people in the medical-cannabis industry.
“I have to stand in front of 121 other representatives and sell this basically, you know, because cannabis as medicine is not something that everybody’s an expert on, and I’m not either,” he told the Mississippi Free Press on Oct. 8. “I do try to read up on it, and I don’t want to be so narrow-minded that I’m not willing to help people that really need it.”
Yancy also said he would want to talk to Edney about changing the card renewal requirement from every 12 months to 24 months, since MSDH regulates the patient cards.
He said he did not know if there would be “appetite to change” potency levels of cannabis flower, nor has he heard people from the cannabis industry recommend it. But the Legislature might consider increasing potency for concentrates like Rick Simpson Oil, he said.
“Concentrates, however, I think there may be some movement there, maybe with Rick Simpson Oil, some other things that need to be higher potency in order to be effective that aren’t necessarily inhaled or eaten,” Yancey said.
Stigma Still Persists
Diana Odom had never smoked cannabis until she joined the Mississippi medical-cannabis program in early 2025. She has a rare genetic disorder called Ehlers-Danlos syndrome that causes pain throughout her body, digestive issues and mental fog.
Changes to federal funding for medical research under the Trump administration mean that researchers will no longer study her condition, she said. The medical-cannabis patient shared her testimony at the board meeting.
“My medical marijuana treatment plan has changed me. I am able to lead a more pain-free life, I am able to be more active, I am able to move, and I finally feel like there is some hope in my life,” Odom said at the board meeting.
However, she said she still feels stigma surrounding cannabis and often feels scared to talk about it openly. Elizabeth Fader-Hosey, the director of Mississippi Patient Voices, said the group supports Henry Crisler’s three policy proposals and believes that some of the board members perpetuated that stigma with their reactions to the “right-to-try” suggestion.
“And then there’s the stigma of the last 50 years. And I’ll just talk about how today in this room I felt that stigma,” the director said at the board meeting. “Earlier, when the physicians were talking about the right-to-try option, the words ‘free-for-all,’ ‘bad actors,’ words like that to me insinuate that people who are seeking relief are liars and that they’re trying to perpetrate a fraud to get their hands on drugs. And I take offense to that.”
Mississippi Patient Voices is a political-action committee that patients created to advocate for themselves after they attended a 2024 Medical Cannabis Advisory Board meeting, Fader-Hosey said. She added that the organization started a statewide campaign to certify new patients, educate the community on the medical-cannabis program and connect patients with cultivators and dispensaries.
Fader-Hosey said the State needs to invest in public service announcements that tell Mississippians about the medical-cannabis program and how patients can join. She said the Mississippi Department of Health or the University of Mississippi could work on the announcements and get industry officials and patients to chip in to help.
“That would help a lot of people understand that we have a legitimate program. Probably a good, like, 15-20% of people coming to our events did not know there was a program in the first place. Because we ask, we do surveys, and we’re like, ‘Why haven’t you gotten your card yet?’ (They replied with) ‘I didn’t know the program existed,” Fader-Hosey said.
Challenges In The Industry
River Remedy Dispensary in Byram, Mississippi, studied 1,500 patients by tracking their cards’ active and inactive statuses, Crisler said. The group found that about 55% of patients in the study renewed their cards from one year to the next, but 45% of the patients studied did not renew their cards within a year.
When patients’ cards expire, Crisler said they must reapply for their patient card; otherwise, they will have to get a new patient number after 30 days. Patients can also choose to let their card lapse and not reapply.
“As it stands, I think we’re looking at losing about 37 patient cards a day for the next 12 months based on the rate we have been losing them,” Crisler said. “I do want to point out that I think part of this attrition might be attributed to patients having their cards lapse but then going to get another card and being issued a new patient card or a patient number, but I don’t think that can attribute for the entirety of that 45% attrition rate.”
Rep. Lee Yancey told the Mississippi Free Press that he would like to know more about why some patients get their medical-cannabis cards but do not renew them after a year.
“I always want to see the program as efficient as it can be,” he told the Mississippi Free Press on Oct. 7. “I don’t want it to be a hassle for people who need a card to get a card. I don’t want it to be super expensive as compared to other states; it ought to be in line with other states.”
The Mississippi Medical Cannabis Program website has a Transparency Portal that includes data about program participation. Four medical-cannabis testing labs are licensed in the state.
Crisler noted that one of the testing labs’ main concerns includes research and development testing for pesticides and heavy metals before issuing a certificate of analysis for vape products. State law requires medical-cannabis vape producers to issue “manufacturer-specific disassembly instructions for vape hardware,” he explained.
But that can be a problem, Crisler continued.
“Once those products are put together and assembled, they’re not meant to be disassembled,” he said. “And so when a testing lab has to disassemble a product, they are potentially contaminating that product. I think a very simple solution to this would be to just allow producers to submit the hardware and the components of the hardware—the concentrate or the distillate that they’re going to put into the vape—separately.”
The Legislature requires that cannabis-testing facilities perform eight testing methods to issue Certificates of Analysis for cannabis growers to sell any cannabis products, including testing for cannabinoids, heavy metals and residual pesticides.
‘Consolidation’ of Medical-Cannabis Marketplace
Henry Crisler said the active medical-cannabis patient count jumped 41.5% from 42,599 participants in 2024 to 61,592 in August 2025.
In addition to four testing labs, Mississippi had 62 cultivators, 66 micro-cultivators, 31 processors, 200 dispensaries, 18 transporters, five disposal facilities and zero research agencies in 2024.
But by 2025, Crisler said industry participation dropped 3.5%. Mississippi had 57 cultivators, 60 micro-cultivators, 18 processors, 17 micro-processors, 193 dispensaries, 18 transporters, four testing labs, five disposal facilities and one research agency.
“Early on, we had a massive amount of enthusiasm for the program,” he said. “We had a massive amount of people wanting to be involved, and we’re starting to see that wane a little bit. The consolidation of the marketplace is starting to take place.”
The State does not have a limit on the number of business licenses or patient cards it can dole out in the medical-cannabis program.
Packaged cannabis flower is the most popular product at dispensaries, making up 52% of sales, Crisler reported. He said vape cartridges make up 18% of sales, while 17% of sales are edibles, 8% are pre-rolled joints and the remaining 5% is split between concentrates, tinctures and topicals.