New Peake tack is licensed dispensaries for medical cannabis | State Legislature | Macon.com

ATLANTA — The federal barriers between Georgians and an epilepsy medicine made from cannabis are so insurmountable that the Macon representative who is championing the cause plans to propose licensing nonprofit dispensaries in Georgia.

“I’m going to provide that as an option to include in our next draft of the bill,” said state Rep. Allen Peake, R-Macon, if a Senate committee hears his House Bill 885 by a key legislative deadline Wednesday.

Peake won nearly universal House support for his original bill, which said that Georgia’s medical research universities could grow a type of cannabis that’s high in cannabidiol, or CBD, and make liquid epilepsy medicine from it. Such CBD-rich liquids are nonhallucinogenic and are already used in Britain and Colorado to treat children who have intractable, severe epilepsy disorders.

But he and other bill supporters admitted that they do not have a clear path for getting Georgians something the federal government says is forbidden.

Growing an illegal substance could jeopardize universities’ federal funding, so they are not likely to take that chance. Colorado cannot export any marijuana products. The British medicine is available only in very small U.S. trials. And though the federal government cultivates some research cannabis, it’s not a high-CBD variety.

It’s all those dead ends, Peake said, that drove him to the nonprofit dispensary model used in other medical marijuana states.

via New Peake tack is licensed dispensaries for medical cannabis | State Legislature | Macon.com.