Plans to legalize medical marijuana in a limited form may be on the fast track after concessions by its sponsor, as the Georgia Legislature officially got under way Monday.
On a day largely filled with ceremony and pomp, talk also swirled of increasing the state’s cigarette tax to help boost revenue for transportation and health care needs — two of the biggest issues facing lawmakers this year.
The biggest movement came on Rep. Allen Peake's plan for medical marijuana, House Bill 1. HB 1 originally had two parts. The first granted Georgians immunity from prosecution if they possessed or transported cannabis oil.
The oil is used to treat certain seizure disorders in both children and adults, afflictions that can cause hundreds of seizures a day and often lead to death. It is harvested from the marijuana plant but does not create the high that recreational use of marijuana produces.
The second part would have created a program to grow the strain of marijuana needed to produce the oil.
But, after meeting with Gov. Nathan Deal late last week, Peake agreed to abandon the grow program — for now. Instead, lawmakers will be asked to concentrate on changes that would provide immunity from prosecution to anyone who is in possession of the particular cannabis oil the bill wants to make legal.
Doing so would clear the way for patients and their parents to travel outside of Georgia to find a supply in such places as Colorado because it allows the oil’s use in limited amounts.
“After much discussion, it is clear that we need to conduct more research on setting an in-state growing scenario in order to provide the best and most effective infrastructure for our citizens,” said Peake, a Macon Republican.
Instead, the new HB 1 would create a commission to study the best way to create a Georgia grow program whether through private contractors or state control, he said. The original proposal would have called for a usable, Georgian-grown marijuana product to be ready by the end of 2016.
Peake said he’s not concerned. “We basically got everything we wanted on the immunity language, and the grow provision will be postponed for a year,” he said.
Peake's effort to pass a similar bill last year foundered in the last minutes of the 2014 session. It died then because the state Senate, led by the chamber's Health and Human Services Chairwoman Renee Unterman, R-Buford, attached to the bill a separate piece of legislation to require health insurance policies sold in Georgia to cover behavioral therapy for some children diagnosed with autism.
Unterman said Monday, however, that she backed the immunity push by the governor. She spent the summer and fall working with the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia to draft language she felt comfortable with. Unterman has also drafted a separate bill addressing immunity but with a narrower scope — allowing the oil for treatment of only epilepsy and only in children — but she said she was not sure she would file it.
“I feel very comfortable after talking with the governor that we’re going to move forward,” said Unterman, who has also met with Peake.
Peake’s effort has popular support. A poll of Georgians conducted this month by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution found an overwhelming 84 percent of respondents supported legalizing a limited form of medical marijuana to treat certain conditions.
But without a Georgia-produced product, patients who could benefit from the cannabis oil face logistical and legal hurdles. While HB 1 would grant them immunity from prosecution in Georgia, that benefit stops at the state line. But Peake said there might be other options.
Several Colorado-based production facilities could soon start shipping cannabis oil under the belief that it would qualify as a hemp-based product, which would make it legal.
But, he said, “that’s a gray area.”
Also, both South Carolina and Florida have passed similar bills in the past year, and the Florida measure allows five organizations there to produce the drug, according to the Washington-based Marijuana Policy Project. That means Georgians could theoretically travel to Florida, buy cannabis oil and return to Georgia without threat of prosecution.
Meanwhile, talk Monday of a potential increase in the state cigarette tax had lawmakers and lobbyists scrambling for information. While few details are known, it does not appear that the idea is being proposed by either the Georgia Hospital Association or Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, two of the major players in state health care at the Capitol.
But, according to those who have heard the plan, raising the cigarette tax would generate new revenue to help pay for Medicaid, the joint state-federal health care program for the poor and disabled. That, in turn, would free up other state dollars to help pay for transportation projects.
Georgia last increased its cigarette tax in 2003, when then-Gov. Sonny Perdue used the windfall in his first year in office to fill a hole in the state budget.
“The cigarette tax has been an issue as long as I’ve been down here,” Unterman said. “When people are looking for sources of money and new revenue, they always bring that issue up. But I think everything is on the table as far as revenue.”
Today, the state's tax of 37 cents per pack is the fourth-lowest in the country, behind Missouri, which levies 17 cents;, Virginia at 30 cents and Louisiana at 36 cents.
Georgia collected $216 million in cigarette taxes in fiscal 2014, which ended June 30.
About the Author
