Mike CarterNASHVILLE — While a bill legalizing medical marijuana died in the House on Tuesday, a bill by Rep. Mike Carter, R-Ooltewah, creating a limited study of the effectiveness of cannabis oil on intractable seizures cleared its first hurdle.
House Health Subcommittee members voted down the medical marijuana bill 6-2.
But the separate Carter measure authorizing a four-year study to determine if cannabidiol oil indeed works on some types of seizures passed on a voice vote.
“I want the state of Tennessee to empirically determine whether it works or does not work,” Carter told the panel.
He said pot would be grown by a Tennessee university and cross-bred to produrce plants that contain only minuscule amounts of the psychoactive ingredient THC, which delivers the plant’s “high” to users.