Assuming that Gov. Tate Reeves calls a special session on a bill hammered out by negotiators from the House and Senate last week, it looks as though Mississippi will finally have a medical marijuana program.

It seems likely the bill will pass, if not in a special session, then in the regular session which begins in January.

Why? While state legislators may not respect the will of the people, they’ve come to respect their wrath. After years of ignoring medical marijuana legislation, which never made it to the floor of either chamber for a vote, the people made it clear they wanted a program, voting by a 3-1 margin to amend the Constitution and create a medical marijuana program in November, 2019. The support cut across all demographics — age, race, gender, income, even religion.

In May, when the state Supreme Court threw out the voter-approved Constitutional amendment on what was, essentially, a technicality, legislators dared not cross the voters again.

So sometime next year, some Mississippians will have access to medical marijuana.

Please note the word “some.” As it is with so many things in our state, poor people need not apply.

Whatever program Mississippi comes up with, it won’t be available in any meaningful way to low-income people. That’s pretty much true in all 31 states who already have medical marijuana, but particularly true in Mississippi, where more than 600,000 residents live below the federal poverty line and probably just as many aren’t too far above the poverty threshold.

Because medical marijuana remains classified as a Schedule 1 drug, medical marijuana is not covered by private health insurance policies, Medicaid or Medicare. If you purchase medical marijuana, you pay 100 percent of the cost. The average cost of 3.5 grams of medical marijuana (the maximum allowed in the proposed bill) ranges from $20 to $60. The monthly cost for the maximum amount of medical marijuana allowed (just under 4 ounces) ranges from $800 to $1,600.

Can you afford medicine that costs up to $40 per day or as much as $1,600 per month? The median household income for Mississippians is $41,754, the lowest in the nation, so the answer is probably “no,” maybe even “hell, no.”

With so many states offering medical marijuana, the time has come to reschedule marijuana, which would allow health public and private insurance coverage. Not even in ultra-conservative Mississippi do we agree with the idea that the cost of medicine should be left entirely to the free market.

When this reality sinks in among the thousands of Mississippians who will be left on the outside looking in when it comes to access to medical marijuana, our state legislators are going to shrug their shoulders and accept no responsibility for a program that so clearly discriminates against low-income residents.

But the truth is, they could do something. In fact, the medical marijuana amendment passed by the voters would likely have had the wherewithal to drive down those costs and make medical marijuana affordable to all who need it.

Under that amendment, 100 percent of all revenues would remain in the Mississippi Department of Health. In Alabama, which recently passed medical marijuana, the projected revenue from the program is estimated at $92 million. Arkansas’ program brings in $60 million tax revenue annually.

If that kind of revenue had been allowed to stay in the Department of Health, a lot of that money could have been used to lower the costs of marijuana to those in pain. But if you think our state legislature has any interest in that, you’ve lost your mind. Under the legislature’s plan, the revenues go to the general fund. And that means medical marijuana will simply not be affordable to many, if not most, Mississippians.

This should not be surprising. When the state legislature helps poor Mississippians it’s almost always by accident and usually quickly corrected.

The pain that poor sick people in Mississippi will continue to endure is compounded by the indifference of our state leaders.

Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].

Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].