Throughout my day at the Capitol, I was able to get a better understanding of how bills get passed and what kinds of conversations the lawmakers have with one another in their committee meetings. In a way, it felt very similar to how some of my clubs vote on things. Very democratic, with rules on how long the conversations can go, if there is enough solid conversation for the committee to come to a vote, and especially with how specific they get when changing wordage in already written bills.

It seems like a lot of what goes on towards the end of the session is making ammends to existing bills, or coming to conclusions about the decision that is to be made about it. However, there was still a lot of push for things to get done.

For example, I sat in on a meeting about SB 33. Essentially, the goal was to reduce the amount of legal THC in products containing it. Discussion went back and forth, mainly trying to clarify what the changes would reflect and defining what these THC products are. Many of the lawmakers didn’t really know anything about it, which is not too surprising to me.

After the meeting, I spoke with Yolanda Bennett, a lobbyist with the Georgia Medical Cannabis Society. She spoke a little more on what the lawmakers didn’t know- the different ways that THC can be ingested and how those different methods affect health. Ultimately, she said that burning the THC oil creates a more intoxicating effect, and that was the main reason why lawmakers were trying to lower the legal amount. However, she mentioned a less intoxicating alternative that allows the medicinal properties of the THC to still work called Volcano, and that if Georgia could normalize the use of it, we wouldn’t need to lower the legal THC limit and further restrict people who use it for its medicinal properties.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/theherbaltrucker

Though I did not get a picture with her, these were the notes I gathered on a conversation myself and other classmates had when we talked after the committee meeting. The above link goes to her LinkedIn page. Upon further research, her story provides some extra credibility to her argument. She is a retired trucker- forced to retire because of prescribed pharmaceuticals that left her permanently injured. She fights for medical marijuana because she believes her forced retirement could have been prevented had she been treated with medical marijuana.