Mississippi Cannabis Advocacy — MMMA, MSCTA, MCPA, MPP

Last verified: May 2026

Mississippi Medical Marijuana Association (MMMA / "3MA")

• Website: mymmca.com
• Executive Director: Henry Crisler.
• Role: Trade association representing licensed operators. Lobbies on potency caps, recertification timelines, and program improvements.
• 2026 priorities: Override of HB 895 and HB 1152 vetoes; removal of 60% concentrate THC cap; extension of card validity to 2 years.

Crisler is the most-quoted industry voice in Mississippi cannabis press coverage. He testified to the Medical Cannabis Advisory Board in 2025 on the unique status of Mississippi’s statutory potency caps and has been a consistent public face for the industry on patient-access reforms.

Mississippi Cannabis Trade Association (MSCTA)

• Executive Director: Melvin C. Robinson III.
• Founded: November 2020 as the "chamber of commerce" for the state’s cannabis industry.
• Membership: Both plant-touching and ancillary businesses (legal, accounting, packaging, security, real estate).

MSCTA was on the ground at the January 25, 2023 first-sale ribbon cutting in Brookhaven. Robinson has played a key bridging role between licensed operators and ancillary service providers, a coalition that has been important in the broader Mississippi cannabis industry-development conversation.

Mississippi Cannabis Patients Alliance (MCPA)

• Website: mscannapatient.com
• Role: Patient-facing resource. Directory of certified practitioners and dispensaries; patient education materials.

MCPA serves as the patient-side counterpart to the industry-side MMMA and MSCTA. The directory function is especially important given the rural-county practitioner gap (35 of 82 counties had no certified practitioner as of late 2025).

Mississippi Patient Voices PAC

• Founded: 2024.
• Led by: Elizabeth Feder-Hosey.
• Role: Statewide patient advocacy and political action.

Mississippi Patient Voices PAC was formed in part to provide a patient-centered political voice on cannabis policy that is not affiliated with the operator-side advocacy bodies. The PAC has been active on the HB 895 / HB 1152 override-vote pressure campaign through 2026.

Marijuana Policy Project (MPP) — Mississippi

• Website: mpp.org/states/mississippi
• Role: National cannabis-policy reform organization with Mississippi state-level analysis and advocacy.

MPP has covered Mississippi’s program closely since the 2020 Initiative 65 campaign. MPP’s framing of SB 2095 as "an attempt to create a middle ground between the extremely restrictive approach some legislators and the governor favor and voters’ strong preference for a broad measure" has been widely cited in subsequent reform debates.

NORML — Mississippi

• Website: norml.org/laws/mississippi-penalties-2
• Role: National cannabis-reform organization with state-by-state criminal-penalties summaries and advocacy.

NORML’s Mississippi page is widely used by attorneys, journalists, and patients researching the state’s criminal-cannabis framework.

ACLU of Mississippi

• Website: aclu-ms.org
• Role: Civil-rights and racial-disparity advocacy. Focused on cannabis-arrest racial disparity, the Rankin County "Goon Squad" federal civil-rights case, and broader policing reform.

Cannabis Defense and Industry Attorneys

• McLaughlin PC (Conner and Matthew McLaughlin) — cannabis industry counsel.
• Whitt Law Firm (Jackson) — cannabis defense and industry counsel.
• Khalaf & Nguyen (Jackson) — cannabis-related civil and criminal practice.
• Slates Veazey (Jackson) — cannabis industry counsel.

Mississippi Bar Association

• Website: msbar.org
• Lawyer Referral Service: 601-948-4471

Industry-Adjacent Organizations

• Mississippi Hospital Association — tracks the medical / clinical dimensions of MMCP for member hospitals.
• Mississippi Pharmacists Association — pharmacy-side perspective on the program (relevant given the federal Schedule I status creates pharmacist liability concerns even though MMCP is not pharmacy-dispensed).
• Mississippi Sheriffs’ Association — law-enforcement perspective on enforcement and the impact of the program on policing.

Reform Coalitions and Allied Bodies

• "We Are the 74" — the post-Initiative 65 advocacy movement that organized the May 25, 2021 Capitol rally.
• Mississippi Center for Justice — civil-rights and equity work, intersecting with cannabis-arrest racial disparity issues.
• Compassion-care advocacy networks — informal networks of patient families particularly active around pediatric epilepsy, ALS, and cancer pathways.