The State Health Department is sticking to its timeline of when medical marijuana will go on sale in Mississippi. And although some of the first crops are being harvested, the director of the department’s Medical Cannabis Program, Kris Adcock, said Thursday that products won’t be delivered to the dispensaries before the end of the year or the first of next year.
And some of earliest medical marijuana to be grown in Mississippi won’t ever be processed. The Health Department says approximately 5,000 plants, worth about $1 million, had to be destroyed because an inspection found that Mockingbird Cannabis was out of compliance with state regulations at a cultivation site in Hinds County.
So far, 406 patients have been certified to receive medical marijuana and 138 dispensaries have received provisional licenses along with 117 medical practitioners, 47 cultivators, eight processors, four transportation companies and three disposal facilities. Only two testing sites have been licensed and they’re still going through a validation process so they can start testing products to be shipped to the dispensaries. The Health Department says more testing facilities will be needed.
