Behind closed doors, Mississippi’s eight-person medical cannabis office is struggling against its workload.
The Health Department office charged by the Legislature with running Mississippi’s new medical marijuana program is steeped in disorganization: agents rarely visit cultivation sites, application backlogs reach hundreds deep, and lags in communication with licensees often stretch on for weeks, a Mississippi Today investigation found.
Business owners feel frustrated, unheard and worried that the millions of dollars they invested — and the tens of thousands they paid in fees to the state — could go up in smoke.
“The state threw them to the wolves,” cultivator Joel Harper said of the fledgling marijuana office. “They should have paid the money to bring in professionals, even a third-party consultant. Instead, they’re sending people out into the cannabis world who have no idea about anything cannabis.”
At the center is a handful of workers, tasked with unrolling a massive program without enough staffing to operate efficiently. Cultivators say when they do hear back from the office, the messages are incomplete or inconsistent – especially when it comes to how they construct their farming facilities.
And that’s if they hear back at all. The office already has mountains of unprocessed paperwork.
As of the second week of January, 277 work permit applications sat in a queue waiting to be processed,…