Senate panel approves latest version of medical cannabis proposal | State Legislature | Macon.com

ATLANTA — A state Senate panel unanimously approved possession in Georgia of a single type of medicine derived from cannabis, with the state’s prosecutors signed onto a plan that violates federal law.

The measure offers “protection from prosecution for possession of cannabidiol oil” used for seizure treatment, said state Rep. Allen Peake, R-Macon, who made the edit on his own House Bill 885 in front of the Senate Health and Human Services Committee on Wednesday afternoon.

The oil is made from a strain of marijuana that is low in tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the chemical that delivers the plant’s high. The plant is rich in cannabidiol, which is non-hallucinogenic and which relieves severe seizures in some afflicted children.

Though doing so would be illegal under federal law, the Legislature could decide to treat cannabidiol oil like any other controlled substance that is banned without a prescription, said Danny Porter, with the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia, who helped draft the edits.

“The prosecutors of this state are not interested in depriving children or adults in this state from adequate medical treatment as long as it doesn’t open the door to legalization of marijuana” on purpose or inadvertently, Porter said.

If a person were to “obtain a prescription for cannabis (cannabidiol) oil … in a state where a doctor is authorized to write that prescription, … if they were able to get back to Georgia, then either the patient or the doctor who administers it would be immune from prosecution” under the bill, Porter told the committee.

But there’s a new wrinkle between Peake and passage. Senators, including Health and Human Services Committee Chair Renee Unterman, R-Buford, are having problems getting the House to pass the so-called “autism bill.” That’s Senate Bill 397 by state Sen. Tim Golden, R-Valdosta, which would require insurance companies to cover autism treatment in patients up to age 6.

So Unterman amended the autism bill onto the end of Peake’s bill just before the unanimous committee vote.

That means the House and Senate versions of the bill are more different than they would have been otherwise. Both sides are already talking about settling the differences in a conference committee in the coming days, before the session ends March 20.

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