Jill Lane of Great Bend sits with her son Trenton while waiting to testify in favor of a bill that would legalize the use of hemp for the treatment of certain medical conditions, including seizure disorders.

Topeka ? Jill Lane traveled from Great Bend Wednesday so she could testify in Topeka in favor of a bill that would give her access to medicine that many believe could relieve her son Trenton of a debilitating seizure disorder.

“I teach in a Catholic school,” she said. “My principal, my priest, they are behind us and they want this bill. They want whatever will help these children.”

Trenton, she said, suffers from a rare brain malformation called lissencephaly, or “smooth brain.” She said the condition has left him unable to speak, walk, talk, crawl or do basic movements on his own. And it causes him to have severe, persistent seizures, sometimes multiple times a day.

Jill Lane of Great Bend sits with her son Trenton while waiting to testify in favor of a bill that would legalize the use of hemp for the treatment of certain medical conditions, including seizure disorders.

Lane said she and her husband have tried many other therapies, starting with high doses of steroids and what she called a “cocktail of benzodiazepine drugs,” which are used for a variety of neurological disorders, to control the seizures.

Those drugs, however, can have serious side effects, and her son could die if given too much or too little of the medication.

The medicine she wants to try, however, is one not currently allowed in Kansas and, in fact, is banned under federal law. That drug is hemp, a form of cannabis that is closely related to marijuana, but which has only a small fraction of the active ingredient THC that causes people to get high when they smoke marijuana.

The bill before the House Health and Human Services Committee would authorize the use of hemp for treatment of certain medical conditions, including the kind of seizure disorder afflicting Trenton Lane.

Rep. John Wilson, a Lawrence Democrat, is pushing the bill, as he has done each of the last three years.

The bill would authorize the establishment of “hemp preparation centers” that could grow the plant, process it into consumable materials such as oil extracts, and dispense it to patients. Those centers would be regulated by the Kansas Department of Health and Environment.

Physicians still could not prescribe hemp treatments because the federal government still classifies it as a Schedule 1 drug. But they would be allowed to issue registration cards, which would also be regulated by KDHE, indicating that a patient has a medical condition that qualifies him or her to receive hemp treatment.

Wilson noted that in January, the National Academy of Sciences published a review of research conducted since 1999 on the medical uses of cannabis and found “conclusive evidence” that certain oral byproducts were effective in treating and preventing chronic pain for adult cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy.

It also said there was “substantial evidence” to suggest it may have other therapeutic effects, while it said there was only “limited evidence” to suggest it has more serious negative impacts.

Still, a number of people testified against the bill, including Dawn Brooks, a medical marijuana advocate who said she the bill was drafted poorly.