EDITORIAL: State shouldn’t force people into being lawbreakers

Dilemma: State of uncertainty or perplexity especially as requiring a choice between equally unfavorable options.

That is what’s faced by patients and parents of those who use medicinal marijuana in Georgia. While it’s legal to have 20 ounces of the liquid (cannabidiol) derived from a particular strain of marijuana plant that does not produce a high, it remains illegal to grow the plant in the state.

Even though patients have to have one of eight maladies, they or their guardians can’t legally buy the oil in Georgia. Here’s where the dilemma occurs. They can order it and have it shipped from a state where marijuana is legal (remember, this strain can have no more than 5 percent THC (tetrahydrocannabinol). However, due to federal laws, that puts the producer at some risk. Patients or their parents can travel to a state such as Colorado where marijuana is legal and purchase the oil but that could lead to federal drug smuggling charges.

So what to do? Parents will go to any lengths to ease their children’s pain. Seizures are life threatening and the cannabidiol eases their frequency and intensity.

The real solution will come before the Georgia General Assembly starting in January. The lawmakers will have in their hands reports from the Georgia Commission on Medical Cannabis and another panel formed by the chair of the Legislative Black Caucus in answer to the absence of any black or Hispanic participation on the other sanctioned commission, an obvious error.

The dilemma faced by patients and caregivers should be eliminated. They shouldn’t be forced into being federal lawbreakers when all they are trying to do is elevate their own or a loved one’s pain.

This story was originally published September 30, 2015 at 8:34 PM with the headline "EDITORIAL: State shouldn’t force people into being lawbreakers ."