ATLANTA — Sebastien and Annett Cotte don’t plan to come home to Atlanta from Denver until after their 4-year-old son Jagger dies — or the Georgia Legislature passes a bill making medicinal marijuana legal.
At 15 months, doctors told the Cottes their son wouldn’t make it to 3, then that he’d never see 4. But he did, and a few months ago they moved to Colorado, where marijuana use is legal, and began to treat his seizures with cannabis oil, his dad said Monday. “He has fewer seizures, but we can’t come home if we don’t have a bill.”
It is unlikely that Georgia legislators won’t pass some kind of bill; the question is what it will allow. The General Assembly has two radically different bills in front of it; only one of them would make cannabis oil available soon.
Rep. Allen Peake’s House Bill 1, which overwhelmingly passed that chamber, is pitted against Senate Bill 185. The Macon Republican’s bill would legalize cannabis oil for patients with seizure disorders and eight other diagnoses, including Jagger’s, a rare and deadly form of Mitochondrial disease.
A bill by Rep. Lindsey Tippins, R-Marietta, would restrict access to cannabis oil only to participants in a limited five-year clinical trial involving people under 21 with epilepsy. It has been approved by a Senate committee. The full chamber could consider it as soon as Wednesday.