Photo: Loretta Nall |
Loretta Nall: “We plan to keep fighting our way through the process” |
An Alabama House committee approved a bill Wednesday that would legalize marijuana for medicinal purposes in the Heart of Dixie.
This is the first time in Alabama history that a medical marijuana bill has advanced out of committee to the House floor.
Patricia Todd (D-Birmingham), who sponsors the bill, said it had no real chance of being approved by both the House and the Senate before this legislative session ends in five days, reports Scott Johnson of the Montgomery Advertiser.
The bill, known as the Michael Phillips Compassionate Care Act, is named after a medical marijuana patient with a brain tumor who fought to make the herb legal for medicine in Alabama. Phillips died in 2007 at the age of 38.
Marijuana was the only thing that allowed Phillips to function normally, according to his mother, Jackie Phillips. Without it, she said, Michael had seven or eight seizures a day.
“I could see the difference in him when he smoked and when he didn’t,” Phillips said.