Medical marijuana is expected to be one of the major issues during the upcoming legislative session, District 39 Representative Dana McLean told the Columbus Exchange Club Thursday afternoon.
McLean, a Republican, was elected to the House in August 2019, defeating longtime incumbent Republican Jeff Smith. This is her first term. She serves on the Agriculture; Colleges and Universities; Constitution; Judiciary B; Public Health; and Workforce Development committees. She is a member of the Florida bar and currently works as a Realtor.
Medical marijuana was overwhelmingly approved via ballot initiative in November 2020. However, the new constitutional amendment was overturned on a technicality by the Mississippi Supreme Court. Despite statewide calls for a special session to pass a medical marijuana bill and to restore the ballot initiative process, Gov. Tate Reeves did nothing.
McLean said she expects both issues will come up in the next legislative session.
“I think ultimately we’re going to have medical marijuana in Mississippi,” she said. “Instead of being in the Constitution, now we’re going to have it as a law. We can go back and change it, and if it were in the Constitution we wouldn’t have been able to change it.”
McLean said she was for “compassionate care” but still wanted to be restrictive enough that children not have access to it.
“We need to make it for those who have a legitimate need for it,” she said. “If it were my choice we would let Ole Miss and Mississippi State grow it and take care of it and eliminate a lot of the back-and-forth and suspicion regarding out-of-state businesses who are coming in and looking to make a lot of money.”
McLean said she did not like the idea of smoking marijuana, even medically.
“There is an issue in respect to smoking it,” she said. “(Lowndes County Sheriff Eddie Hawkins) is totally against it, 100 percent. I think it will make it difficult for our law enforcement to determine if you got it from a dispensary or if you got it on the street. Is it the legal stuff, or the illegal stuff? It’s going to be very difficult.”
McLean said the current draft of the medical marijuana bill is 250 pages, front and back.
“It’s changed two or three times just in the last few months as it goes back and forth between the committees that are working on it and the governor,” she said. “He has things he wants to be in the bill.”
She said she expects the referendum process to come up, as well.
“Citizens have to be able to put together a referendum if the legislature is not addressing a topic that they want to see addressed,” she said. “It’s very important to reinstate the process and get the language fixed.”
McLean said she will sponsor a bill in the next session for women who have children born via in vitro fertilization after the death of a spouse.
“I have a constituent who has a child born via IVF after the death of her husband,” she said. “This will be my third time to present this bill.”
The constituent was married and her husband died of brain cancer. They had banked sperm so they could have children after his treatment, and she decided to have a child later.
“She tried to get Social Security benefits based on her husband, and she was told no because the child was conceived after his death,” she said. “This law will address who is considered an heir of someone. The law currently does not provide for a child born from a decedent, even though the child is biologically an heir. We want to change the law so that child will be an heir of the deceased father.
“Technology is more advanced than our laws are,” she said. “The law needs to change to keep up with what’s happening. In other states, they have made that provision. (The law) may not affect many, but it may affect someone.”
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