VICKSBURG, Miss. (VDN) — In a city where fast food is often the most accessible meal option, one local Vicksburg business is changing the narrative—one smoothie and salmon plate at a time.

Vicksburg Nutrition, known as “NUTRI” to regulars, opened its doors in June 2025 with a mission to make wellness more convenient and accessible. The grab-and-go health food shop, located at 908 Cherry St., offers nutritious options like meal prep plates, cold-pressed juices, smoothies, salads, yogurt parfaits, and more. But its mission runs deeper than food—it’s about breaking generational patterns of poor health.

“As someone raised in Goodman, Mississippi—a town with limited access to healthy food—I saw how food insecurity impacted my family,” said the owner, Tameria Rule, a soon-to-be Registered Dietitian. “Diabetes, high blood pressure, kidney failure—it wasn’t just data, it was my reality.”

That early exposure shaped her passion. By eighth grade, Tameria knew she wanted to study nutrition and kinesiology to help change her community’s future. After facing gestational diabetes during her second pregnancy and losing her mother in 2022, she became even more committed to modeling better habits for her children and her customers.

“I realized I couldn’t let these patterns continue. Nutrition is a tool to break the cycle.”

Vicksburg Nutrition was created with busy families and professionals in mind. Everything is made fresh and designed to support healthy habits without sacrificing flavor or time. Among customer favorites are the teriyaki chicken bowls, hearty salads, and the “Very Banana Berry Smoothie.”

“People often tell us, ‘I didn’t expect it to taste this good and be healthy,’” she said. “That’s the goal—healthy, but satisfying.”

What makes Vicksburg Nutrition stand out is its commitment to education and community support. The business has donated meals to local schools and athletic teams and partnered with gyms, wellness instructors, and schools to promote better health across the city.

“We’re not just here to sell food. We’re here to support a healthier Vicksburg.”

The shop’s atmosphere is just as intentional. Bright, welcoming, and filled with positive energy, it’s a place where customers feel like family. A standout memory for the owner was when a customer shared how the meals helped them manage diabetes and lose weight. “They told me they finally felt supported,” she recalled. “That moment reminded me why I started.”

As the business grows, exciting updates are on the horizon. Plans are underway to introduce a catering menu, custom meal plans for athletes and professionals, mobile delivery, and product placement in local businesses.

Tameria’s favorite go-to meal? “The grilled salmon with roasted potatoes and sautéed spinach. It’s what I call soul food with a twist—clean and flavorful.”

Above all, she wants people to remember one thing: “Nutrition is not a diet—it’s a lifestyle.”

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Aug. 11, 2025 – A new Mississippi law will take full effect on Oct. 1, restricting the sale of vape products in the state to only those authorized by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Under House Bill 916, the Mississippi Commissioner of Revenue will publish a statewide directory on October 1 listing all electronic nicotine delivery system (ENDS) products—commonly known as vapes—that are legally approved for sale. This includes nicotine vapes, e-liquids, and related devices that have received FDA marketing authorization, have a pending Premarket Tobacco Product Application (PMTA), or have had a denial order stayed or overturned.

Retailers will then have 60 days to sell or remove any products not listed in the directory. After the grace period, unlisted vape products will be banned from sale in Mississippi and may be seized, forfeited, and destroyed.

The law applies to nicotine-containing vape products as well as other ENDS devices, and is intended to align Mississippi’s retail market with federal FDA standards. Violations can lead to fines, product seizures, and potential loss of a retailer’s tobacco sales license.

Supporters say the measure will help reduce the sale of unregulated vaping products to minors and ensure product safety, while critics argue it could limit consumer choice and hurt small vape shops.

President Donald Trump confirmed earlier this week that he is weighing rescheduling marijuana—that is, moving the drug to a less-restrictive classification under federal law. State-legal marijuana companies have salivated at the possibility and are pouring millions of dollars into efforts to convince Trump to go along with this Biden-era idea. While the president is personally uncomfortable with legal weed, the Wall Street Journal reports, he also believes that making this change on marijuana would put him on the right side of an 80/20 issue.

But the president can move in a popular direction on pot without rescheduling, a change that would be disastrous for public health and orderliness. He need only take a series of steps to expand medical research into pot. This would give him a political victory while preventing the messy consequences of rescheduling.

Shifting marijuana from its current position on Schedule I to Schedule III of the federal list of controlled substances would designate the drug as having lesser potential for abuse and assert that it has accepted medical uses. In its waning days, the Biden administration initiated efforts to reschedule but failed to complete the change before Trump took office.

The state-legal companies pushing for rescheduling are doing so because they stand to gain the most. A move to Schedule III would let them deduct business expenses on their federal taxes—a benefit that the U.S. tax code prohibits for trafficking in substances listed in Schedules I and II.

Advocates of rescheduling usually downplay this pecuniary motive. Instead, they claim that rescheduling will make it easier to do medical research on pot. That’s a persuasive pitch—labeling marijuana as “medical” makes it seem more benign. While about 70 percent of Americans favor legalizing marijuana, roughly a third choose only medical legalization when given the option.

It’s not obvious that rescheduling would make research easier, though. Schedule I substances are subject to strict research controls, including onerous registration processes and on-site storage rules. Schedule III substances face lower barriers. Yet as the Congressional Research Service explained last year, “medical researchers and drug sponsors of marijuana or CBD containing drugs would not benefit from these looser restrictions associated with rescheduling without congressional action.”

That’s because of the Medical Marijuana and Cannabidiol Research Expansion Act (MMCREA), a 2022 law that created separate rules for marijuana to reduce the burdens of doing research on the drug. Rescheduling would not affect this separate track. The result, legalization advocate and lawyer Shane Pennington has argued, is that the effects of rescheduling and de-scheduling are now much harder to achieve than before the law meant to make research easier was passed.

But even if rescheduling won’t make research easier, the political insight of its advocates—that people want to support medical marijuana research—is a good one. That’s why the Trump administration, rather than rescheduling, should push as hard as possible into actually expediting medical marijuana research. Doing so would give Trump the political victory he wants, without making pot more accessible and incurring any of the associated consequences.

Trump could take several unilateral actions to speed medical marijuana research. Start with recommitting his administration to implementing the MMCREA—which members of Congress complained the Biden administration was dragging its feet on.

The MMCREA has a number of provisions, many of which Trump could bolster with executive action. For example, the act requires that the Drug Enforcement Administration reply to registration applications by researchers and manufacturers within 60 days. Because these decisions are made unilaterally by an executive agency, Trump could impose what amounts to a “shall issue” standard, mandating that applications be automatically approved after 60 days absent a denial.

The MMCREA also requires the administration to ensure an “adequate and uninterrupted” supply of marijuana for research purposes. Previously, only the University of Mississippi was authorized to grow pot for medical research. A spate of new approvals and deregulation, including under the last Trump administration, has somewhat increased the number of approved growers. Trump could mandate that the Drug Enforcement Administration move to grow further the number of “bulk suppliers” through new approvals. He could also have the DEA issue more permits for importing marijuana under 21 CFR 1312. Most aggressively, he could use the DEA’s waiver authority to let pharmacies dispense marijuana for research purposes directly.

The Trump administration could build on this effort in other ways. For example, federal research funding could be earmarked to provide compliance infrastructure (like the secure storage needed for Schedule I substances) for researchers deterred by the costs. The administration could direct the National Institute on Drug Abuse to prioritize funding on medical marijuana’s applications, with a mandate to both NIDA and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to consider all ways to expedite the research review and approval process.

Lastly, the Biden administration’s decision to reschedule was based on a flawed HHS report, which ejected the traditional “five-factor” test for commonly accepted medical use and relied on low-quality evidence to arrive at the desired result. Trump could seek a new analysis from HHS, which should provide not only a review of the currently available evidence under the conventional standard but also clarity on what research would be needed to ascertain marijuana’s appropriate scheduling status—including a possible move to Schedule II, which would make it medically available but ineligible for the tax deductions allowed for trade in Schedule III substances.

Of course, it’s possible that plant cannabis—as distinct from the isolated chemical compounds CBD and THC, already used in several medications—has no real medical value. But that doesn’t mean more research is bad. As an ardent critic of marijuana legalization, I’d be happy to find good evidence that cannabis can be used as a medicine.

Regardless, a big push on marijuana research would help Trump cut the Gordian Knot of the rescheduling debate. It would give him credit with the public without further enabling the spread of an addictive substance that a majority of Americans now see as harmful. That’s a win-win for both the president and America.

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