Pubdate: Sun, 26 Jan 2014
Source: Chattanooga Times Free Press (TN)
Copyright: 2014 Chattanooga Publishing Company, Inc.
Contact:  http://www.timesfreepress.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/992
Note: Paper does not publish LTE's outside its circulation area
Author: Tim Omarzo

GEORGIA, TENNESSEE EYE DIFFERENT PATHS TO LEGAL MEDICAL MARIJUANA

Some have dubbed 2014 as the year of marijuana legalization.

Voters in Colorado and Washington passed ballot initiatives that
legalized the sale this year of recreational pot. A recent Gallup poll
found for the first time that a clear majority of Americans -- 58
percent -- say marijuana should be legalized, and President Barack
Obama was quoted this month in a New Yorker magazine article as
saying, "I don't think [marijuana] is more dangerous than alcohol."

Twenty states and the District of Columbia now allow medical
marijuana, and about 10 other states have medical marijuana laws in
the works -- including Tennessee and Georgia.

Here in the Bible Belt, however, conservative lawmakers prefer a form
of therapeutic cannabis that helps reduce seizures in children but
doesn't cause a buzz because of its low content of
tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the compound responsible for marijuana's
"high."

"It would not be smoked," Georgia state Rep. Allen Peake, R-Macon,
told a Macon TV news station. "We need to make sure that everybody
understands that."

Peake is expected to introduce a bill this week in the Georgia House
that would allow patients to receive a form of medically beneficial
cannabis, cannabidiol oil, that could be injected or given orally. It
would be tightly restricted, he said, and prescribed by doctors.

Peake was inspired to write the legislation after visiting Haleigh
Cox, a 4-year-old girl from Forsyth, Ga., in his district. She takes a
cocktail of medications to try to control as many as 100 seizures a
day.

Cox's family was ready to move to Colorado after talking with parents
there whose children's seizures had basically been cured by
cannabidiol oil -- but the move was postponed this month when Haleigh
stopped breathing and had to stay at Children's Hospital at Egleston
in Atlanta.

Another Georgia legislator, state Sen. Josh McKoon, R-Columbus, has
proposed holding hearings in the Georgia General Assembly about the
health benefits of medical marijuana for such conditions as seizures
and relief of nausea.

In a recent poll, a majority of Georgia residents -- 54 percent --
favored laws like Colorado's and Washington's that allow recreational
pot use; 57 percent supported medical marijuana with a doctor's
prescription and 62 percent want to do away with criminal penalties
for less than an ounce of pot. The telephone poll was commissioned by
two Georgia affiliates of the National Organization for the Reform of
Marijuana Laws.

But when NORML members held a recent rally on the state Capitol steps,
neither Peake nor McKoon -- who both oppose recreational marijuana use
- -- attended.

Named for toddler

Tennessee's bill, introduced by state Rep. Sherry Jones, D-Nashville,
is dubbed the "Koozer-Kuhn Medical Cannabis Act."

The Kuhn refers to Jeanne Kuhn, a Tennessee cancer patient who used
marijuana as medicine before her death in 1996. Her husband, Paul
Kuhn, formerly was national chairman of NORML.

The Koozer part refers to a former Ooltewah toddler, Piper Koozer. Her
parents, Justin and Annie Koozer, moved to Denver, Colo., where they
can legally get cannabidiol oil for Piper's rare form of epilepsy. Her
condition, Aicardi syndrome, is caused by a missing corpus callosum,
the part of the brain that allows the right and left sides to
communicate. An estimated 800 children nationwide have the syndrome.

Before the Koozers left for Colorado, the girl suffered from 250 to
300 spasms in a six-hour period.

"The frequency of seizures is down and the intensity of seizures is
down," Justin Koozer said Friday. "We're pretty impressed."

Koozer has been calling Tennessee legislators from Colorado to share
his story and encourage them to support marijuana legalization.
Republican lawmakers haven't supported Jones' bill, he said, but some
have suggested Tennessee could go the route of Georgia and propose
approval of low-THC cannabidiol oil.

"It really has no street value, because you can't get high off it,"
Koozer said.

While low-THC cannabidiol oil helps patients like his daughter, Koozer
said THC has medicinal benefits, too, such as pain and nausea relief.

A recent article in The Tennessean highlighted Penn and Nicole
Mattison, who sold their landscaping business and moved their
daughter, Millie, and her two older brothers from West Nashville to
Colorado Springs, Colo. They've found a doctor there willing to treat
Millie with Realm Oil, extracted from a strain of cannabis low in
psychoactive THC -- the intoxicating compound recreational users seek
- -- and high in cannabidiol, which initial research shows may be a
potent anti-epileptic compound.

Penn Mattison told The Tennessean he got the idea from Dr. Sanjay
Gupta's CNN special report, "Weed."

Tennessee state Rep. Mike Carter, R-Ooltewah, said he's had long talks
with the Koozer family and supports legalization of low-THC cannabis
oil for those suffering from seizures.

But even if it were legal in Tennessee, the Stanley brothers, who
founded the nonprofit Realm of Caring Foundation in Colorado Springs,
Colo., wouldn't ship their low-THC Realm Oil here because that would
violate federal law.

"I talked to Joel Stanley last Saturday," Carter said. "He is not for
medical marijuana. He is for low-THC cannabis oil that has a dramatic
effect in reducing those kids' seizures."

The Realm of Caring is working on developing a low-THC oil from
industrial hemp plants, not marijuana plants, that would be able to be
to be sold in Tennessee without medical marijuana legalization, Carter
said.

Carter, who is adamantly opposed to recreational marijuana use, thinks
Jones' bill to legalize medical marijuana in Tennessee would be too
lenient.

"It is so broad that if you have regular headaches, you can go out
behind the barn and smoke marijuana," he said.

Long odds

Jones' bill would allow medical marijuana use for such diseases as
cancer, glaucoma, post-traumatic stress disorder, Alzheimer's disease
and Crohn's disease, which killed Jones' brother in 2010 and inspired
her to introduce the legislation. The bill includes what's been called
a catch-all: "any other medical condition or its treatment as
certified or prescribed by practitioners and approved by the health
department."

The bill calls for participants to enroll in what would be called the
"Safe Access" program. They would get a Safe Access card that they
would use to get the "dried flowers of the female cannabis plant and
any mixture or preparation thereof," the bill states.

Pundits doubt the Democratic lawmaker's bill can pass as
written.

Past medical marijuana bills in Tennessee gained little traction, and
House and Senate sponsors of the last bill, proposed in 2012, lost
re-election bids, The Tennessean reported.

Republicans hold supermajorities in the Tennessee General Assembly,
with 26 seats in the Senate to the Democrats' seven, and 70 House
seats to the Democrats' 28.

But Jones is undeterred, The Tennessean article states, because
medical marijuana once was legal in Tennessee. In the early 1980s,
Tennessee was among a handful of states that joined the federal
Controlled Substances Therapeutic Research program. The measure was
repealed in 1989.

Georgia, too, legalized the use of marijuana for cancer and glaucoma
patients in 1980, but the review board that was supposed to qualify
patients has been inactive for about 20 years, according to Macon TV
news station WMAZ.

"Some of the conservatives up here believe that it's not fair to keep
these sort of remedies from people who need them," Jones told The Tennessean.

"That makes me very hopeful for the legislation. If you look at a list
of the diseases and sicknesses that medical marijuana can positively
affect, it is a huge, long list of things."  
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MAP posted-by: Jo-D