Mike Watkins was at the Stone Community Center in Oxford, Mississippi, for an educational event with his children when he became one of the first people to sign a ballot initiative petition to legalize medical cannabis, known as Initiative 65, in 2020.
He had long had his eye on cannabis legalization. He had become a medical-cannabis patient in Oregon while he was obtaining his culinary degree from 2008 to 2012. The advocate remembers going to open-air markets, similar to farmers’ markets, where he could look at and smell medical-cannabis products before purchasing them.
That experience opened up the U.S. Army veteran’s eyes as to what a medical-cannabis program could look like with collaboration from the State, local communities and residents. Oregon even had a home-grow program where patients could grow their own cannabis, and a constable would stop by regularly to ensure patients were following the law. Watkins told the Mississippi Free Press he believed it was a good marriage of “church and state” when it came to the relationship between patients and law enforcement.
When he moved back to Mississippi in late 2012, he threw himself into doing advocacy work for ballot initiatives, including measures to enact recreational and medical-cannabis programs and to expand Medicaid coverage. Those hopes died temporarily on May 14, 2021 when the Mississippi Supreme Court struck down Initiative 65 while invalidating the entire ballot-initiative system. State lawmakers later passed a more restrictive medical-cannabis program. But despite vowing to revive the ballot initiative soon after killing it, legislators have repeatedly failed to do so in every legislative session since the 2021 ruling.
“I think having a ballot initiative, it gives a grassroots, passionate plea from passionate people; it gives us a chance to actually put things in place that maybe the state’s not ready to back, but the people are,” Watkins told the Mississippi Free Press on April 28. “There is a disconnect—and I don’t know why that is—but there is a disconnect between what the people want and what the politicians are wanting to put forth.”
With the 2027 statewide elections coming up, Watkins said the Mississippi medical-cannabis community wants candidates who support the ballot initiative, not “career politicians” who have not made successful efforts to revive it. Mississippi has almost 69,000 medical-cannabis patients.
“We’re going to try to lobby each candidate, and we’re going to try to make sure they understand we’ve got 150,000 people behind us or more. And with all of them being so close to each other, I mean, let’s be honest, it’s really hard to tell the difference between Andy Gipson, Shad White, Lynn Fitch and some of the others who have been in government for so long,” he said, adding that their policies all are “the same” for the most part.
Gipson, who is Mississippi’s Republican commissioner of agriculture and commerce, announced his run for governor in July 2025. Fitch, who is Mississippi’s Republican attorney general, has not made any official plans for the 2027 election, but many people suspect she’ll aim for the governor’s mansion. Shad White, Mississippi’s Republican state auditor, is considering a run for governor, although he has not made a formal announcement yet. Former Mississippi House Speaker Philip Gunn, a Republican, announced in April that he would be running for governor. None of these politicians have made reinstating the ballot initiative part of their platform.
‘Against Our Constitutional Rights’
Mississippi voters previously had the right to collect signatures to put issues that mattered to them on the ballot for Mississippians to decide whether to amend the state Constitution through the citizen-led ballot initiative. Even today, the Mississippi Constitution says that “the people reserve unto themselves the power to propose and enact constitutional amendments by initiative.” The state adopted that as part of its Constitution through a referendum vote in 1992. Only 26 states and Washington, D.C. had ballot initiatives or referendums by 2026, which allow voters to collect signatures to determine whether to uphold or repeal existing laws.
The legal battle with the ballot initiative started with the longtime Republican mayor of Madison, Mary Hawkins Butler, who challenged the initiative before the 2020 election, arguing that Initiative 65 conflicted with the zoning authority of the City of Madison.
Butler’s case made it all the way to the Mississippi Supreme Court, which ruled in May 2021 that the medical-cannabis initiative and all ballot initiatives were invalid because the language in the ballot initiative law says that voters must collect a certain amount of signatures from the state’s five congressional districts to put an initiative on the ballot. Mississippi once had five congressional districts, but after the 2000 Census showed a drop in population, the state lost a district and has had just since 2001.
In its ruling in Watson v. Butler in May 2021, the Mississippi Supreme Court’s majority claimed that it relied purely on the “plain meaning of the words and terms” to arrive at its decision because it could not know the intent of the lawmakers who drafted Section 273(3). Its drafters could have, the majority suggested, intended for the ballot initiative process to sunset in the event that the number of congressional districts changed.
“The only evidence of the intent of the drafters that passed the amendment process is the intent found in the text itself, and … that text clearly evidences an intent to cap the signatures at twenty percent of qualified electors of a single congressional district,” the Watson v. Butler majority ruled.
Medical-cannabis patient and advocate Melody Worsham was an active participant in supporting grassroots efforts for ballot initiatives for years, especially initiatives regarding the legalization of recreational and medical cannabis, back when citizens still had the ability to put issues that mattered to them on the ballot. She recalled how she felt when the Mississippi Supreme Court took away the ballot initiative.
“My heart sank,” Worsham said, remembering her emotions that day in May 2021. “That was the last thing I ever would have thought that they would have done.”
She also expressed shock that Gov. Tate Reeves did not call a special session in 2021 to reinstate the ballot initiative.
“He played with it and he dangled that carrot and then he decided against it. So then, that just made us even more livid because it was like he’s not even honoring to restore our constitutional right that was taken from us,” Worsham said. “You know, it’s one thing to be against cannabis. It’s a whole other thing to be against our constitutional rights.”
Some Mississippians, including Worsham, Watkins and Sheena Ann Steadham, have been fighting to get the ballot initiative reinstated since then. The MAACP (Marijuana Advocates Against Corrupt Policy) group on Facebook, of which she is a moderator, started after the ruling with a focus on holding state officials accountable. Another Facebook group, We Are The 74, which is composed of people who voted for Ballot Initiative 65, came out around the same time to urge legislators to take action to reinstate the ballot initiative.
The Ballot Initiative ‘Needs To Be What The People Want’
Another chance at restoring the ballot initiative died at the Mississippi State Capitol during the 2025 legislative session.
Mississippi Senate Elections Committee Chairman Sen. Jeremy England, R-Vancleave, introduced an option that would only allow ballot initiatives to amend the state’s code statutes and not the state Constitution, unlike the original ballot initiative.
“I do think that this is something that a lot of our constituents are actively asking about,” he said on the Senate floor on Feb. 11. “It’s an important issue because it is in the Constitution currently and we’re trying to fix this system to be attainable, yet tougher, and so I ask for you to vote for it.”
Senate Concurrent Resolution 518 also said the Legislature would not be able to veto or change a ballot initiative for two years after any initiative becomes law, “unless there are extenuating circumstances that affect the peace, health, safety or financial solvency of the state,” England said. “If that is in place, then it will require a vote of three-fifths of this body to make those changes.”
Previously, the number of signatures a ballot initiative needed was based on the number of people who voted in the previous governor’s election. In England’s proposal, the number of signatures would be 10% of active, registered voters. Mississippi has 1.8 million active, registered voters, which would be about 189,000 signatures. No more than one-third of those signatures could have come from any one congressional district. The previous ballot initiative system said an initiative had to have an equal number of signatures from each congressional district.
“The good news about this being one-third is that if we unfortunately ever lose another congressional district, then we will have a pro-rata system then,” England said. “If we gain one, which I know we all hope we do, if we can get our population back coming here to Mississippi, this will not affect that. This will still be in effect, you will just not be able to have more than one-third of your signatures from any one congressional district.”
But Sens. Joel Carter, R-Gulfport, and Chris Johnson, R-Hattiesburg, raised alarm at England’s ballot initiative proposal. Carter told England he worried about rich lobbyists influencing ballot initiatives by raising large amounts of money to gain enough signatures to put the measures on the ballot.
When the Mississippi Free Press asked Carter if he thought lobbyists rallying lawmakers to pass certain bills was an issue in the Legislature, he said “that was more of a federal issue than a state issue.”
“My experience in politics has been there’s not a lot that goes on in state politics as far as money goes,” he told the Mississippi Free Press on April 2. “Now, you look at D.C., it’s a whole different ballgame. Lobbyists control D.C. I don’t see that being an issue in our state.”
However, England told the Mississippi Free Press that lobbyists pouring in money to Mississippi lawmakers is “a legitimate concern.”
“There’s certain issues that you would see a lot of outside influence trying to affect policy here in Mississippi,” he told the Mississippi Free Press on March 31. “You know, that’s something I would like to look at, if we need to identify the sources for funding for either for and against ballot initiatives, if we could have somebody to do that, to let the voters know who’s behind this. That could be maybe be a campaign finance reform part of the bill, to make the funding sources transparent.”
Worsham criticized Carter’s remark, noting that the Legislature passed an ibogaine research bill to give $5 million in opioid settlement money to a consortium that will study the medical and therapeutic effects of the psychedelic drug. Ibogaine advocates and out-of-state industry workers pushed Mississippi to join Texas’ venture in funding ibogaine research. She said out-of-state money helped influence the Legislature’s decision to study the psychedelic drug.
“(Mississippi has) a government that is 30% or more funded by the federal government, which means that national politics do play a part in the decisions we make,” Worsham said.
Mississippi lawmakers decided to nix talks of Medicaid expansion after President Donald Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill slashed federal Medicaid spending, of which Mississippi is heavily reliant. Advocates launched a Medicaid expansion ballot initiative in May 2021, but it never made it to the ballot because the Mississippi Supreme Court nullified the ballot initiative system mere days later.
Carter told the Mississippi Free Press that he did not support England’s ballot initiative legislation because he did not believe that the Legislature should have the power to vote to override citizen-led ballot initiatives.
“If we’re going to do a ballot initiative, it needs to be what the people want, and the Legislature shouldn’t be able to go override it,” Carter told the Mississippi Free Press. “Now, a true ballot initiative, in my opinion, is elections. We all get elected to come up here and pass laws, and if people don’t agree with what their senator or their representatives do, get somebody else to run against them.
He made a motion to table the ballot initiative resolution on Feb. 11, and the legislation died on the Senate’s calendar during the legislative session.
Worsham said she supports the ballot initiative and wants Mississippi to reinstate it because it is the primary way to “hold our elected officials accountable.”
“Technically, what Mississippi has done, you know, what our Legislature and our Supreme Court has done, is they have actually taken all of the people’s power away to even hold their government accountable and to have to respond to us,” Worsham told the Mississippi Free Press on April 22. “So now, they are pretty much acting autonomously. They don’t have to listen to us. In every legislative session, we actually see that because when we make calls and we actually do make contact with the legislators, they’ll tell you straight up, ‘Oh, we don’t look at your texts and we don’t read your emails. And you know, we’re too busy for all that.’”
Medical-cannabis patient and Kudzu Cannabis Company budtender Sheena Ann Steadham, who lives in Rankin County, has supported ballot initiatives, including Initiative 65 for medical cannabis. Steadham said that many lawmakers do not listen to Mississippians who reach out to them to express concerns, adding that not having a ballot initiative process is another way to “silence the people.”
“I do feel like they fear the ballot initiative is taking away their funding and it’s no longer lining their pockets because our voices are more powerful than money,” she told the Mississippi Free Press on April 22. “At the end of the day, I mean, when our voices are actually being heard, it kind of stops some of that funding. Why do I need to fund you? Why do I need to give you my money when this ballot initiative is getting passed?”
