The Georgia Senate this afternoon voted 54-0 to allow the parents of children with certain catastrophic diseases to travel to Colorado to purchase cannabis (marijuana) oil that can slow or stop the children from having seizures and other problems.
Despite the unanimous vote, however, passage of the bill that’s been sent back to the House has become more complicated than many had hoped. The Senate added to the bill a provision dealing with insurance coverage of certain therapies for autistic children under seven years old.
The bill will now be negotiated between the House and Senate. Midnight tonight is the deadline for passage by both houses.
This legislation came a long way since early in the session, when the words ‘cannabis’ and ‘marijuana’ raised a lot of eyebrows in both chambers. Even today in discussion of the bill, there were reassurances that it doesn’t legalize recreational marijuana (as in Colorado), that no marijuana will be grown legally in Georgia, that no kids will be getting high, and so on. There was even one reference to ‘snorting’ pot.
