Patience, Please!
Radio Commentary, 90.7, 91.7 New Life FM, March 20, 2015 – By Sue Ella Deadwyler
Today is Day 33 of this legislative session, and only seven days are left! Bills with a glimmer of hope for passage needed to be half-way through the process by the end of Day 30, which was last Friday. Bills that didn’t make the cut-off are dead for the session, unless they are amended onto bills that DID pass the half-way mark by midnight March 13th.
At last count, five marijuana bills had been introduced this session, and a couple made it through the half-way mark, because supporters masterfully played on Georgia heartstrings to advance their case for legalizing marijuana as a miracle drug for children with medication-resistant seizures. Nobody wants children to suffer, but important facts are noticeably absent from the narrative.
For example: Marijuana is a dangerous Schedule I narcotic, with no known medical value and unlimited possibilities for abuse. However, the Federal Drug Administration has already approved clinical studies to determine whether purified oil from marijuana is a viable anti-seizure treatment. Physicians conducting the study will use Epidiolex to conduct Investigational New Drug studies involving epileptic children. Epidiolex is a new 98 percent pure product from cannabis, which is better known as marijuana. The British firm GW Pharmaceuticals will provide liquid Epidiolex in two strengths, to be dispensed in syringe droppers.The FDA-approved clinical studies will occur at the New York University School of Medicine and the University of California in San Francisco, where both will monitor 25 or more patients. Two additional individual studies are planned for California.
Another FDA study gave Fast Track approval to Insys Therapeutics’ treatment for a rare form of childhood epilepsy known as Dravet syndrome. The Fast Track designation means initial clinical trials will begin this year and will focus on a second rare form of childhood seizures, in addition to Dravet syndrome. The Insys product is over 99.5 percent pure and is synthesized to be chemically identical to the CBD product extracted from marijuana.
Thanks to Governor Deal’s 2014 initiative, similar studies are underway in Georgia. Those studies are located in Augusta and Sandy Springs. These currently known research projects should encourage everyone who’s interested in legalizing marijuana to wait until scientific research proves that medicating with marijuana would do no harm to suffering children. So, far there’s no such proof. For Georgia Insight I’m Sue Ella Deadwyler, your Capitol correspondent.