Chas Sisk

csisk@tennessean.com

Medical marijuana legislation was rejected Tuesday afternoon, failing for the year without clearing its first hurdle.

The Koozer-Kuhn Medical Cannabis Act, House Bill 1385, was voted down 6-2 by the House Health Subcommittee after more than a month of testimony. The decision killed the supporters’ slimming hopes of seeing a medical marijuana bill advance in the General Assembly this year.

Wearing homemade T-shirts decorated in green, backers packed into the hearing room in Legislative Plaza, even though they had come to expect that the bill would fail Tuesday in the Republican-dominated subcommittee. Despite the setback, they said progress had been made by putting the issue before health and agriculture officials in Tennessee.

Among those gathered was Toni Corbin, a Lebanon woman who had hoped marijuana could be legalized to treat her 35-year-old son, Wallace Peterson, for traumatic injuries he sustained in a 2009 motorcycle accident.

“We’re coming back next year,” she said.

A much more narrow cannabis amendment has been introduced. Tacked onto SB2531 and HB2461, it would allow cannabis-extracted oils high in the medicinal component cannabidiol but with only trace amounts of psychoactive THC to be used in clinical research.