Public health advocates say addressing the fear of legal repercussions after dialing 911 will save overdose victims in a medical crisis after Georgia's "medical amnesty" bill passed the legislature Tuesday.

"There was a lot of emotion in this bill because there's a lot of people who have been and are going to be affected by this situation," said Jeremy Sharp, a student at the University of North Georgia and founder of UNG's chapter of Students for Sensible Drug Policy.

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First, 20 states and the District of Columbia passed laws legalizing marijuana for medical use. Then in 2012, voters in Washington state and Colorado approved measures legalizing the sale and possession of marijuana for non-medical use, with state oversight. Now at least a half-dozen states from Alaska to Maine are considering following suit.

Marijuana still remains a federally controlled substance, but Attorney General Eric Holder in January said the U.S. Justice Department would soon issue regulations to let state sanctioned marijuana businesses have access to banking and credit.

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The effort to legalize medical marijuana in Georgia appears dead for the year.

Rep. Allen Peake, R-Macon, who championed the idea after lawmakers had already convened for the year and delivered it to the brink of final passage, acknowledged the end late Thursday of the legislative session's final day.

His bill fell victim to time and the typical political webs that ensnare well-meaning legislation every year.

Peake looked for any opportunity to get the bill passed. His last-ditch effort was to attach it to Senate Bill 291, which created a new agency for adult and aging services.

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ATLANTA (AP) - With just hours remaining in Georgia's 2014 legislative session, sick patients and their caregivers were waiting to see if state lawmakers could compromise to create a program authorizing the medical use of a marijuana derivative. The Associated Press Georgia Rep. Sam Teasley, R-Marietta, looks over the Georgia State Capitol during a dinner break during the last day of the legislative session Thursday in Atlanta.

By law, the General Assembly meets just 40 working days annually. Any legislation not approved by midnight Thursday automatically has failed for the year.

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ATLANTA -- As the clock ticked through the final hours of the annual state legislative session, state Rep. Allen Peake launched a last-minute but ultimately unsuccessful plan to pass his medical marijuana bill.

"For these families, their reality is ... a child who is going to have one hundred seizures tomorrow," said Peake, R-Macon, author of House Bill 885, which would have decriminalized possession of a liquid medicine derived from cannabis that's used to treat pediatric seizures.

With just more than two hours remaining in this year's session, Peake had pinned his hopes on a maneuver that unhitched his bill from an unrelated issue of requiring insurance companies to cover pediatric autism treatment.

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Macon Lawmaker Made Last-Ditch Appeal to Senate.

The effort to legalize medical marijuana in Georgia is dead for the year.

Rep. Allen Peake, R-Macon, who championed the idea after lawmakers had already convened for the year and delivered it to the brink of final passage, acknowledged the end late Thursday, the legislative session's final day.

His bill fell victim to time and the typical political webs that ensnare well-meaning legislation every year. House Bill 885 was designed to allow Georgia families use of cannabis oil to treat certain seizure disorders in both children and adults, afflictions that can cause hundreds of seizures a day and often lead to death. The oil is harvested from the marijuana plant but does not create the high that recreational use of marijuana produces.

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A new bill that would grant amnesty from certain drug charges for those who seek help in the event of a drug overdose is now awaiting Governor Nathan Deal's signature to be officially passed into law.

The bill passed the Georgia House of Representatives again last night after the Senate approved it with a few amendments. The House approved the amendments and now the bill sits on Governor Deal's desk, awaiting it's passage into law.

Tanya Smith, a Holly Springs Georgia police lieutenant and mother, said she has been an advocate for the bill ever since her 20-year-old daughter overdosed on heroin.

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If the Georgia Senate and House of Representatives approve the medical marijuana bill the state would become a leader in the nation in health care.

James Bell, founder of Georgia Campaign for Access, Reform and Education is one supporter of this belief.

House Bill 885 would grant easier access for patients with glaucoma, epilepsy and cancer to receive cannabidiol oil, a derivative of medical marijuana.

On March 3, "Crossover Day," the last possible day for a bill to be approved by either chamber, the Georgia House of Representatives passed House Bill 885 in a 171 person to four person vote, Bell said. The bill then went to a senate committee who debated and altered the bill, attaching autism to the list of patients allowed to receive medical cannabis. The senate will vote to approve the amended version and pass it along to the House for a vote on March 20.

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When students drink and do drugs they normally have two fears: the fear of getting in trouble and the fear of someone getting hurt. And the former almost always trumps the latter with college students. The choice between the two has left too many dead in the past.

But Georgia House Bill 965 - or the Georgia 911 Medical Amnesty Law - would grant amnesty from small drug charges to those who call for help in the case of drug overdoses. It overwhelmingly passed through the House and Senate and now awaits Gov. Nathan Deal.

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Citizens rightly have contempt for cannabis (marijuana) prohibition, one of America's worst policy failures in history. Anyone who wants to use cannabis does. The concept of keeping sick citizens from using the plant in order to stop responsible adults from using cannabis, which is already easy to acquire, is mind-boggling. Politicians who support the continued suffering of sick citizens over this beneficial God-given plant should be replaced immediately before another citizen suffers due to their ignorance.

- -- Stan White

Dillon, Colo.

[end]

Sharp distinctions were drawn Wednesday night between the two candidates in the nonpartisan race for mayor of Athens-Clarke County, but a debate sponsored by the Young Democrats of UGA also revealed a point of near-agreement between incumbent Nancy Denson and her challenger - no relation - local activist Tim Denson.

The mayor used Wednesday's debate on the UGA campus, in front of dozens of students, a handful of Athens residents and a couple of commission candidates, to announce for the first time that she favors the decriminalization of possession and use of small amounts of marijuana.

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An open letter to state Rep. Sharon Cooper: As a parent pushing for life-saving medical cannabis here in Georgia for my daughter who suffers from severe seizures and developmental delays, I had hoped as an elected official, you would not resort to outright lies to push your agenda ("Research needed, complexity abounds," Opinion, Feb. 14), especially at the expense of sick children. Your op-ed painted a picture that we are seeking unresearched, untested, dangerous medicine for our children, and nothing could be further from the truth. The medicine we seek is already doctor-approved, lab-tested and safer than then numerous FDA-approved drugs our children take today. I also can't understand why you would do this about a bill (House Bill 885) that you have voted in favor of twice now. Please correct your facts the next time you speak publicly and try to use scare tactics to prevent our children from getting life-saving medicine.

BLAINE CLOUD, SMYRNA

[end]

ATLANTA - A Georgia Senate panel this week unanimously approved a newly-revised bill that would legalize marijuana derivatives in Georgia for treatment of patients with cancer, glaucoma and seizure disorders.

The Senate Health and Human Services Committee amended House Bill 885, the original House version of the medical marijuana bill, to make it easier for Georgians to gain access to cannabidiol oil, a non-psychoactive derivative of marijuana.

The major change would grant immunity from prosecution in Georgia for possession of CBD oil obtained legally in a state that permits the use of medical marijuana.

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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.

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According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an estimated 443,000 people die from tobacco each year; 8.6 million live with a life-threatening illness, and approximately 46.6 million Americans continue to use the drug.

Like tobacco, alcohol is abused by numerous Americans. Over 80,000 deaths are caused by excessive drinking yearly in the U.S.

However, both tobacco and alcohol are legal and sold at a store nearby. Two of the top three killers in America are sold at grocery stores and gas stations.

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A drug that counteracts overdoses on opioid drugs such as heroine, OxyContin and morphine is now available to the public for free.

The drug is called Naloxone, and it isn't a new drug; patients in ambulances and emergency rooms get this antidotal drug when it is required.

Though this drug sounds amazing, many have voiced concerns that it doesn't help drug users get clean and instead makes them take higher doses of drugs because they don't have to worry about fatal overdoses.

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"The road to hell is paved with good intentions." That old adage certainly fits a scenario playing out in the Georgia General Assembly.

House Bill 885 or "Haleigh's Hope Act" - better known around the Gold Dome as the medical marijuana bill - began as a tightly drawn bill to provide children with intractable seizures access to an oil derived from a specific marijuana strain available only in Colorado.

This little-known product is "manufactured" by a group of marijuana-growing siblings - not physicians or scientists. It gained national notoriety thanks to the CNN special "Weed" and anecdotal reports by families of their children's seemingly miraculous cures. As we studied this bill, we found that this oil hasn't been tested for purity or consistency, and it hasn't been tested in animals.

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I am 17 years old, and I suffer from severe Crohn's Disease, a chronic inflammatory disease of the gastrointestinal tract.

I have struggled with this disease for two years now, and spent my Christmas vacation at Scottish Rite in Atlanta full of IVs, being fed through a catheter run under my bicep into my chest cavity, in agonizing pain, losing blood, and on the verge of needing a total removal of my colon. I dropped from 170 pounds to 135, all on a 6-foot 2-inch frame.

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Legislators may pass the Haleigh's Hope Act before the session ends next week, improving access to a form of medical marijuana for children like her who suffer from seizure disorders. But Haleigh won't be in Georgia for the occasion.

"Haleigh quit breathing six times last night, so we don't have time anymore," her mother, Janea Cox, told me Wednesday. Mother and daughter left Thursday for Colorado, which already has legalized the cannabis oil that has helped other children reduce the number of debilitating seizures they suffer from as many as hundreds every day to as few as one every few months.

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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.

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