MACON, Ga. — Georgia lawmakers will gather Thursday to consider expanding the state’s restrictive medical cannabis program beyond terminal patients, a change that could open access to thousands of Georgians with chronic conditions.

The House Blue-Ribbon Study Committee on Medical Marijuana and Hemp Policies will meet at Mercer University to hear public testimony and review proposed legislation that failed to pass during the most recent session.

“The big difference last year was trying to remove the end of life,” said Rep. Robert Dickey, who represents District 145 in Bibb and Crawford Counties. “So patients have conditions, and it’s maybe not life-threatening or end of their life that didn’t have a use for medical cannabis for whatever conditions — expand that a little bit.”

Georgia’s current medical cannabis law, known as the HOPE Act, requires patients to have terminal conditions and obtain prescriptions from licensed physicians. Products can only be purchased from state-licensed dispensaries and must be non-smokable forms like tinctures, edibles and topical lotions.

The push for expansion began with families affected by autism. Doctors worked with parents whose children with severe autism benefited from cannabis products, according to Dickey.

“Allen Peake from Macon, he had patients, young patients who had autism, and this product helped those young students and young people with their severe autism,” Dickey said. “And that is the impetus of this bill, but I think it has multiple other uses.”

Dickey, who chairs the House Agriculture and Consumer Affairs Committee, said many patients and doctors remain unaware of current legal options. Meanwhile, hemp-derived CBD products sold at smoke shops and convenience stores operate with minimal regulation.

“So on the medical side, very regulated, but as you see with all our smoke shops and convenience stores selling a lot of other health products, it’s the wild west,” Dickey said. “And so we’re trying to find a middle ground on both of those issues.”

At Fine Fettle in Macon, one of Georgia’s licensed medical cannabis facilities, General Manager Will Kacheris said the company has prepared for potential expansion by building significant unused capacity into its 118,000-square-foot facility.

“We have the capacity, as you can see, this room is 5,000 square feet. We need a capacity for about 1,600 plants in this room,” Kacheris said, showing our cameras around the facility. “We have three rooms exactly like this. We have another room that we can start all these plants in.”

The facility currently transforms cannabis plants into high-THC oil through distillation, creating products that are 90% to 98% pure THC. State law prohibits smokable flower products.

“That is currently not allowed to sell smokable flower,” Kacheris said. “The only thing that can be sold by us to our medical patients is consumable edible consumables, things like soft drops, tinctures.”

Kacheris expressed confidence that Georgia will eventually follow other states in expanding medical cannabis access, citing patient demand and potential tax revenue.

“We’ve seen it in medical state after medical state that as more and more citizens of those states realize the extreme benefits of utilizing this plant medicinally,” Kacheris said. “We’ve seen that legislators eventually realize that it’s in the best interest of these patients to get better treatment.”

The study committee was formed after neither House nor Senate versions of expansion legislation passed during the most recent session. Committee members plan to gather testimony statewide before making recommendations for the 2026 legislative session.

Thursday’s meeting begins at 10 a.m. in the President’s Dining Room at Mercer University, 1501 Mercer University Drive. The hearing is open to the public and will be livestreamed. Chairman Mark Newton, a physician from Augusta, will lead the proceedings.