Pubdate: Thu, 27 Feb 2014
Source: Daily Citizen, The (Dalton, GA)
Copyright: 2014 Daily Citizen
Contact:  http://daltondailycitizen.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1929
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mmj.htm (Cannabis - Medicinal)

STILL TRUE

A bill before the state Legislature that would legalize one form of 
medical marijuana for one group of patients passed an important 
hurdle on Wednesday. But not without undergoing some changes.

The House Health and Human Services Committee approved a bill by Rep. 
Allen Peake, R-Macon, that would allow a type of cannabis oil to be 
prescribed for severe seizure disorders. Parents of children with 
those disorders as well as physicians report dramatic improvements 
when the children have been treated with cannabis oil.

But before the bill passed, Peake was forced to amend it to legalize 
the cultivation of marijuana and the production of cannabis oil by 
the state's medical schools. The bill had originally counted on 
obtaining cannabis oil from states that have already legalized 
marijuana, such as Colorado. But federal law prohibits shipping 
cannabis oil across state lines, and producers in those states said 
they weren't willing to take the legal risk of shipping cannabis oil 
to Georgia.

We predicted almost a month ago that obtaining cannabis oil from 
outside the state would be a problem, even as the bill's supporters 
insisted it would not.

At the time, we also said Peake's bill, while well intentioned, was 
ultimately too narrow and too bureaucratic. It's basically an 
expansion of a state program that has existed for some 30 years that 
allows patients with glaucoma and cancer to obtain medical marijuana. 
But that program never got off the ground, and the board that is 
supposed to oversee it has been inactive for most of the past two decades.

In part, the problem was an issue of supply. The program counted on 
getting medical marijuana from the federal government. But even if 
the feds had supplied the medical marijuana, it isn't clear that the 
program would have benefited many people. It didn't simply allow 
doctors to prescribe the drug to those who had the conditions it 
covered. The bill forced the individuals to get prescriptions from 
and obtain the marijuana directly from the state's medical colleges, 
just as Peake's bill would do for cannabis oil.

State lawmakers say they don't want medical marijuana legalization to 
become de facto legalization of recreational marijuana. And we 
suspect many Georgians don't want that either.

At the same time, the legislators need to recognize that many 
patients, and doctors, believe the plant can help a wide variety of 
illnesses. And the legislators need to realize that seriously ill 
patients may not be able to complete a complicated process to obtain the drug.

We wrote earlier that "If Georgia has thoughtful, intelligent 
lawmakers, they should be able to craft a law that really can allow 
all patients who need medical marijuana to obtain it but doesn't 
allow too much abuse of that privilege. Surely, lawmakers can find 
some middle ground between a medical marijuana program so narrow that 
it is doomed to failure and one so broad that it invites widespread abuse."

We still believe that to be true.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom