Georgia medical cannabis bill dies in final minutes of legislative session

ATLANTA -- Georgia will not expand access to the state's medical cannabis registry this year, as a bill to make the change expired in the final minutes of the annual legislative session.

People who have the seven diagnoses listed in the bill, including post-traumatic stress disorder and autism, will remain ineligible to join the registry.

State Rep. Allen Peake, R-Macon, the author of the bill, blamed the Senate for failing to pass it.

"Why wouldn't they want to help as many citizens as possible?" Peake said after the late-night vote.

The House approved a list of seven diagnoses, but the Senate wanted a list of three diagnoses and wanted to make a change to the kind of liquid cannabis registry patients can have.

Right now, being on the medical cannabis registry entitles a patient to possess up to 20 fluid ounces of a liquid made from cannabis, if the THC content is 5 percent or less. THC is the compound in cannabis that causes a high. A Senate proposal sought to cap the liquid at 3 percent THC, but even that never came up for a vote.

Peake said the Senate proposal was a step backward and would drive people out of state to seek medicine.

At the beginning of the year, more than half of state representatives signed onto a broader version of the bill. It would have expanded the registry as well as licensed a handful of companies to cultivate medical marijuana in the state.

But support wilted fast. A House committee cut cultivation from what was House Bill 722.

In the Senate, the bill found a powerful opponent in Health and Human Services Committee Chairwoman Renee Unterman, R-Buford. She declined to hold a hearing on the bill, saying she heard from people who did not want it and that her committee was busy with some 70 other bills.

Peake tried a last-minute parliamentary maneuver to pass his bill -- he attached it to an unrelated senate Bill 145 that already had Senate approval. But the Senate didn't buy his changes.

Peake has been pushing to get medical cannabis in the hands of Georgians over the last few years. He carried the bill last year that created the state medical marijuana registry.

The Macon legislator wants to see medical cannabis cultivation in the state. That would give Georgians a place to buy it without crossing state lines and potentially being snared in federal drug smuggling laws.

To contact writer Maggie Lee, e-mail mlee@macon.com

This story was originally published March 25, 2016 at 8:25 AM with the headline "Georgia medical cannabis bill dies in final minutes of legislative session ."