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- Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves has vetoed four bills this legislative session, primarily targeting public health legislation.
- Reeves rejected two medical marijuana bills, citing concerns about one potentially facilitating recreational use and stating the other was an unnecessary alteration.
- The governor vetoed a disaster loan program bill due to a dispute over interest rates, though a revised version was later signed.
- More vetoes are possible as Reeves reviews remaining legislation, including bills he has rejected in previous sessions.
The veto pen is among the most powerful tools of the Mississippi Legislature, and Gov. Tate Reeves has wielded it habitually in his tenure. This year, his vetoes have mostly been directed toward public health bills so far, with more likely to come.
Reeves can handle bills that passed both chambers in three ways. He can sign bills that he supports into law, and he can allow them to become law without his signature. He can also hit the brakes on pieces of legislation that he disagrees with, vetoing all or part of a bill and resigning it to a future legislative session.
He has vetoed four bills as of Wednesday, April 8, half as many as he did the previous two sessions, but Reeves will continue reviewing legislation and potentially reject more proposals over the coming days.
Medical marijuana
Reeves vetoed both of the medical marijuana bills that passed through the Legislature this session, issuing the fatal blow for bills that had already faced unfriendly chambers.
One of the bills, the “Right to Try Medical Cannabis Act,” had a single, specific provision that Reeves took issue with. The bill’s original intent, which Reeves described as commendable, was to extend the opportunity to try medical marijuana to those with debilitating conditions that fall outside of the current law’s scope.
Mississippi law identifies approximately two dozen qualifying conditions, but medical professionals, including state health officer Daniel Edney, argued that there were many other conditions that could benefit from medical marijuana. The bill would have allowed patients, with the support of their doctors, to apply for a limited treatment course to see whether marijuana might help them.
“I believe nearly all reasonable people would agree that a Mississippian suffering from a painful and debilitating terminal illness should be afforded an opportunity, subject to medical review,” Reeves wrote, “to try any medication or treatment to ease their suffering when they are near the end of life.”
The issue, Reeves wrote in his veto letter, came in the Senate, where the bill was amended to extend the right to try to “every person on the planet.” Legislators inserted a provision that would allow non-residents to participate in the program. Under the bill, people who live in Tennessee, where medical marijuana isn’t legal, could have pursued treatment across the state border.
“I share the State Health Officer’s concerns that the amendment of HB 1152 beyond its original intent has the potential to upset the tenuous balance struck by the Act,” Reeves wrote, “and poses an unreasonable risk of pushing the medical marijuana program in the direction of facilitating recreational use.”
Reeves generally supported the bill, he wrote, and would sign it if the Legislature filed it again with only the narrow changes included at the start.
The other bill took a tumultuous path from inception to Reeves’ denial. Its initial proposal would have loosened the state’s medical cannabis program restrictions, including by doubling the validity of medical user cards to two years and extending caretaker card validity to five years.
It also would have eliminated the requirement for a patient to follow up with their provider six months after receiving their medical cannabis card.
Nearly immediately, legislators pushed back against the House bill. Some senators, heeding advice from doctors and medical lobbyists, reined the provisions in.
Two years of user card validity reverted to one, and five years of caretaker card validity was clawed back to two instead. Both chambers approved the more modest changes in the amended bill and sent it to the governor’s desk, where Reeves slammed the door on the bill and, likely, most other proposed changes to medical marijuana law.
The Mississippi Medical Cannabis Act has been “largely successful,” Reeves wrote, and he believes “there is no reason to alter it now.”
The disaster loan program
Reeves’ first veto of the session targeted the disaster loan program, a legislative proposal meant to help cities and counties in Mississippi recover from the devastating winter storm that occurred at the start of the year.
With the veto and harshly worded veto letter, Reeves took aim at the state senate again, having previously attacked the chamber’s leadership after it killed the school choice initiative without discussion.
What happened with school choice?: MS Senate committee kills House school choice package in just 90 seconds
The loan program conflict emerged over interest rates and, as Reeves wrote, legality.
The program was simple enough on its face: the state would loan money out to needy municipalities and, when the loan was repaid, send more money back out to other places, doubling or tripling the impact of the fund.
Reeves said he and legislators compromised on a monthly 1% interest rate on recovery loans, down from the 2% rate he initially favored. That language made its way into the bill, but lawmakers decreased it to a 1% rate for the year instead.
Disagreement ensued. Reeves wrote in his veto letter that lawmakers went behind his back to change the bill sneakily, and potentially illegally, while members of the Legislature maintained that everything was done above board and the governor’s proposal would have crushed already vulnerable municipalities.
Reeves’ perspective: Mississippi governor vetoes winter storm help bill, calling it ‘possibly criminal’
“The plainly unconstitutional (and possibly criminal) act of the person or persons that attempted to surreptitiously change a material (and negotiated) term of Senate Bill 2632 is unconscionable,” Reeves wrote, “and calls into question the validity of every bill that I have signed into law this session.”
Writing that it “plainly violates multiple provisions of the Constitution,” Reeves vetoed the bill. The veto came during the session, though, so lawmakers added the loan program, now with a 3% annual interest rate, in a different bill. Reeves signed the second attempt on April 6.
Will there be more vetoes?
Based on numbers from previous years, there is a chance that Reeves will veto more bills in the coming days. He has five days to reject or sign a bill after it hits his desk, otherwise allowing the law to go into effect without his participation.
Some provisions that he has vetoed in the past, including a government efficiency bill and $13 million grant for LeFleur’s Bluff State Park, are back on the table this session. In both bills, the language that Reeves identified as problematic last year has been altered, potentially indicating that it has a better chance of passing into law.
Bea Anhuci is the state government reporter for the Clarion Ledger. She covered the 2026 Mississippi legislative session and the decisions that lawmakers made. Email her at banhuci@usatodayco.com.
