MONTGOMERY, Alabama – It may seem odd that a state historically as conservative as Alabama just legalized a marijuana derivative for medical research.

Early this year, some people dismissed the idea of passing a bill legalizing the marijuana-derived oil, known as cannabidiol, or CBD.

“I would say four months ago, people scoffed at Alabama … making it available,” said state Rep. Mike Ball, R-Madison, one of the authors of the bill now in effect as Carly’s Law.

The law authorizes the University of Alabama at Birmingham to begin researching CBD as a medicine. The bill, named in honor of 3-year-old Carly Chandler of Birmingham, would allow the UAB's Department of Neurology to prescribe the drug, which advocates for the law say helps children with seizures.

The passage of the bill demonstrates not just a national trend – Ohio and Florida could be the latest states to consider legalization of medical marijuana – but a relaxation of attitudes among conservative lawmakers, especially within the Republican Party. Ball, a former police officer, is one of those Republicans who decided to push for the change in law when he heard the stories of children having seizures.

One set of Alabama parents even moved to Colorado, where marijuana is legal, to get the substance for their child. The CBD was seen by parents as a way to control the seizures.

A variety of factors carried the bill quickly over the finish line in the 2014 session, where it was signed by Gov. Robert Bentley, a Republican, on April 1. One of those factors was a poll the GOP did on legislative issues. Included in that poll was a question on marijuana-based medicine to treat neurological disorders, according to Ball.

The numbers were very much in favor of the change, Ball said.

A recent poll by Pew Research Center even indicates the public believes retail sales of marijuana, for recreational use, are inevitable. Seventy-five percent of respondents in the U.S. poll told Pew that legalization was coming, with 54 percent saying marijuana ought to be completely legal.

But in Alabama, recreational use of marijuana was the ball and chain holding Carly's Law back. Ball was assured because CBD does not get users “high,” and that it shows promise in the treatment of seizures. Thus, Alabamians were strongly for the change in state law.

That doesn’t surprise Allen St. Pierre, the executive director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, a group based in Washington, D.C.

St. Pierre says medical marijuana has polled strongly with the public for years, but the issue has been ignored by the federal government and many state legislatures.

“(Medical marijuana) has been more popular than the politicians who have kept the prohibition in place,” said St. Pierre.

That prohibition stretches back about 76 years, when the federal government made marijuana illegal and even banned medical research of it, St. Pierre said. Today, angry mothers are a powerful political force, St. Pierre said, and they want answers as to why their children cannot have access to marijuana-derived medicines that could control seizures.

St. Pierre said many of the reform laws, including Carly’s Law, would not have passed a year ago. Now they are passing in conservative “red states” such as Alabama.

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Indeed, Republicans were so proud of the law, they often listed it as one of the top accomplishments of the 2014 legislative session. House Speaker Mike Hubbard, R-Auburn, said he hopes the law becomes a model for other states to examine as they consider limited and controlled legalization of marijuana-derived medicine.

The law doesn’t come close to the kind of medical marijuana policies that California instituted. And it does not legalize the recreational use of marijuana, as Colorado voters more recently allowed.

But the law was a big change in Alabama, and much to ask for. Yet when mothers brought their children to the Alabama Statehouse, Ball said, and when UAB agreed to research the medicine, opposition to the bill melted away.

The bill passed both chambers of the Alabama Legislature unanimously.

St. Pierre said a number of factors are causing lawmakers nationwide to reconsider their policy on marijuana. One is that baby boomers are coming more fully into power, and they have different attitudes on marijuana than their parents.

The Internet and California's legalization of medical marijuana are two other factors changing minds, St. Pierre said.