Friday, October 1, 2021

It’s the end of the week and the first day of October. Whatever philosophical significance you want to place on that is your business. For me, it merely is what it is, as always.

Anyhow. Gov. Tate Reeves still hasn’t made any moves to call a special session so the State Legislature can vote on the medical marijuana bill it put together last week. Yes, I am obsessed with this, deal with it. He says he will sometime soon, but that’s about all he’s done. We’ve heard from some other agencies involved in the bill, first the Department of Agriculture, about their concerns. The latest is Health Department head Dr. Thomas Dobbs who mirrors Ag Secretary Andy Gipson’s concerns about how his department will pay for the extra work they do.

Rep. Lee Yancey, one of the bill’s authors, has said the Legislature will most likely pass the necessary appropriation bills to make sure the three departments – Agriculture, Health, and Revenue – would have sufficient bread to get started. It should be noted that under Initiative 65, which state voters overwhelmingly passed, all funding concerns would be taken care of in-house by a newly established committee.

It should also be noted that both Dr. Dobbs and Gipson initially opposed medical marijuana but they’ve accepted reality and the inevitable. No word on how Revenue head Chris Graham feels. We got a restatement of their issues with things this past Tuesday when the Legislative Black Caucus held a hearing on the matter. For the most part, they’re on board with medical marijuana and are working on drafting something for the next legislative session should Reeves do what I expect him to do and sit on his hands.

One thing they have an issue with is the bill’s proposed limiting of growers to indoor facilities of at least 1,000 square feet. They say this will cut out Black farmers, of which Mississippi has a surfeit. Especially in the Delta, a lot of folks still make their living farming and most of them are Black and behind several eight balls. However, experts on the matter said the indoor requirement is pretty standard across the country. Once you’ve seen one set of medical marijuana regulations, you’ve seen them all apparently.

However, during testimony from experts, it was argued that some states have used their land-grant university systems to help individual farmers get involved. We have two such universities, Alcorn State and Mississippi State, and Ole Miss’s marijuana research facility has the oldest and largest federally funded growing program in the country. For the longest time, it was the only one. Ain’t that a hoot?

In any event, all this hinges on Reeves getting his thumb out of his ass and calling the special session like he promised. I for one am not sanguine he’ll do such a thing, mainly because he seems to be more interested in railing against Nancy Pelosi. Beats working, I guess.

One last thing. Starting today, your mail is going to take more time to get to you. In what he’s calling cost-cutting measures, controversial Postmaster General Louis DeJoy said the Postal Services practices will change to save money, which basically boils down to cutting out most of the air service they use. How this affects you is what used to take two to three days to get first-class mail from one end of the country to another will now take up to five days. So it might be a good idea to get your holiday shipping out sooner.

Look for price increases, too, starting with holiday prices and continuing on for the nonce. It should be noted that the Postal Service is self-funding and, well, we’re sending less mail these days. We are, however, sending more packages, particularly thanks to online shopping, but it doesn’t seem to be making up the slack. Plus, back in 2006, the Post Office was told they had to make sure they could fund pensions for the next 75 years, which was probably a bit much.

It’s no secret conservatives hate the post office. Thanks to them, a lot of the things you used to could use the post office for – such as banking – is no longer valid. Regardless, it’s an example of a government agency that still functions and functions well. That’s probably why they hate it so much. The changes will most certainly have different effects depending on where you live, too. Y’all that live west of Texas or so better buckle up for some long hauls.

Have a nice weekend. I promise to stop talking about medical marijuana until something happens. Pinky swear.