MONTGOMERY, Alabama - The Alabama legislature gave final approval today to Carly's Law, allowing marijuana-derived oil that reduces the frequency of seizures to be used to help treat severe cases of epilepsy.

The bill,

was approved in a 27-0 vote by the Senate this afternoon. The bill has been sent to Gov. Robert Bentley to be signed into law, which

For one Madison mother pushing for the bill to help treat her 19-month-old daughter, the support from the legislature seemed like a miracle. Gena Dalton said today it was far more than what she could have hoped for when she began lobbying lawmakers to pass the law several months ago.

Gena Dalton of Madison, AL, whose daughter has 20 to 30 seizures a day, rejoiced with the legislature's passage 3.20.14 of Carly's Law, which allowed for the legalization of marijuana-derived CBD oil. (Paul Gattis/al.com)

Dalton described the mid-session addition of a clause to bring the University of Alabama at Birmingham aboard to study the use of marijuana's CBD oil as "a huge game-changer."

Under the bill, the UAB Department of Neurology would be the only entity in the state authorized to prescribe the cannabidiol (CBD oil) to treat people with epileptic and neurological conditions.

Dalton said in January she was lobbying for the law when she learned of the efforts by the Chandler family in Birmingham, whose daughter Carly was the inspiration for the law's name.

"When we first started down this path, we were just hoping and praying that we could get the laws changed so that we would not go to jail," Dalton said. "The original Carly's Law was just decriminalization. That's all we were hoping for. It's all we thought we could get."

Election-year politics, Dalton said, may well have been an insurmountable obstacle. And with just the decriminalization aspect of the bill, Dalton said it would not have been enough to keep her family from moving to Colorado where marijuana is legal.

The addition of UAB's role in the dispensing of the medicine, however, provided a medical windfall for her daughter Charlotte, who Dalton said has about 20 to 30 seizures a day.

"We knew it was an election year and we knew how conservative Alabama is and Alabama has the toughest marijuana laws of all the states," she said. "We were almost, I guess, a little nervous about even approaching it.

"When we found out that UAB was going to come in and do this study and they were going to keep the decriminalization part and include the UAB study, that was a huge game-changer for us. Even though Carly's Law would have allowed for decriminalization, we were still stuck being able to obtain this medication for our children. We were still kind of stuck with going to Colorado."

Dalton said she knew of the Swann family, which moved to Colorado last year because of its legalization of marijuana, and thought her family may be following in their footsteps.

"Our hopes were next year, get a bill so that we could do some studies or whatever to get this medication to our children," she said. "We really didn't have any idea we would get this much out of the bill right out of the gate. We've just kind of been floor-boarded with it. We're so happy. Even had Carly's Law passed in its original state, we still would have been stuck having to move. It might would have kind of allowed to come back to visit but you are sketching around federal laws trying to get back to Alabama.

"We were trying to take it in an incremental process. To have this much out of the bill this quickly, it's definitely out of our hands and in the hands of someone much more powerful and higher up than us."