Pubdate: Tue, 10 Mar 2015
Source: Chattanooga Times Free Press (TN)
Copyright: 2015 The Associated Press
Contact:  http://www.timesfreepress.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/992
Note: Paper does not publish LTE's outside its circulation area
Author: Bill Hendrick, the Associated Press

2 WIDELY DIFFERENT MEDICAL MARIJUANA BILLS TO BUTT HEADS

ATLANTA - Sebastien and Annett Cotte don't plan to come home to 
Atlanta from Denver until after their 4-year-old son Jagger dies - or 
the Georgia Legislature passes a bill making medicinal marijuana legal.

At 15 months, doctors told the Cottes their son wouldn't make it to 
3, then that he'd never see 4. But he did, and a few months ago they 
moved to Colorado, where marijuana use is legal, and began to treat 
his seizures with cannabis oil, his dad said Monday. "He has fewer 
seizures, but we can't come home if we don't have a bill."

It is unlikely that Georgia legislators won't pass some kind of bill; 
the question is what it will allow. The General Assembly has two 
radically different bills in front of it; only one of them would make 
cannabis oil available soon.

Rep. Allen Peake's House Bill 1, which overwhelmingly passed that 
chamber, is pitted against Senate Bill 185. The Macon Republican's 
bill would legalize cannabis oil for patients with seizure disorders 
and eight other diagnoses, including Jagger's, a rare and deadly form 
of Mitochondrial disease.

A bill by Rep. Lindsey Tippins, R-Marietta, would restrict access to 
cannabis oil only to participants in a limited five-year clinical 
trial involving people under 21 with epilepsy. It has been approved 
by a Senate committee. The full chamber could consider it as soon as Wednesday.

But Tippins, from Marietta, said Monday he sees little chance for 
compromise. Yet Peake is upbeat. "I'm very encouraged by what got 
passed" in the Senate, Peake said. "It supports the governor's 
executive order that set up an ongoing clinical trial."

The Senate bill grants immunity for youths in the study, being 
conducted by Georgia Regents University, who'll use a weaker type of 
cannabis oil.

"The immunity language acknowledges there is a need," Peake said. "If 
the Senate bill passes and it comes to the House side, we would try 
to add my bill's diagnoses and have nine conditions. So it was a huge 
step, moving toward finding a solution."

The other conditions are cancer, Crohn's disease, Fibromyalgia, Lou 
Gehrig's disease (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), multiple sclerosis, 
Parkinson's disease and sickle cell anemia. A law including all nine, 
Peake said, could help up to 500,000 Georgians.

Peake has a lot of support, especially among victims, who filled the 
Capitol last week. He and Sen. Renee Unterman, R-Buford, chairman of 
the Senate Health and Human Services Committee, met with the families.

Though the gap between the two bills seems wide, longtime University 
of Georgia political scientist Charles Bulloch said a law is still possible.

"I wouldn't want to bet the farm," he said. "But things come out of 
conference committee the last night with very little scrutiny. Last 
year medical marijuana fell apart over a last minute dispute over a 
different issue, autism."

The Cottes are one of at least 17 Georgia "refugee" families in 
Colorado for cannabis oil. Others, such as Katie Crosby, 26, of 
Macon, are contemplating such a move. She suffers from debilitating 
Fibromyalgia and said treatment she received in Colorado "was like a 
miracle," easing her chronic pain. She said leaving Colorado was "the 
hardest day of my life, but I felt an obligation to help people in Georgia."

HB 1 would make it legal to possess up to 20 ounces of cannabis oil 
with no more than 5 percent THC, or tetrahydrocannabinol, the 
psychoactive ingredient.

Tippins' measure would permit those in the study to take a substance 
with only 0.3 percent THC. Peake said that's not strong enough to be 
effective and would "be a complete deal breaker."

He says 23 states and Washington, D. C., have medicinal marijuana 
laws with no limit levels on THC, the psychoactive ingredient. He 
says 12 have medicinal marijuana laws only for epilepsy, and limits on THC.
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