Senate Bill 220, the Putting Georgia’s Patients First Act, turned years of patient advocacy into a single package of reforms that reshaped Georgia’s medical cannabis program. Its lead Senate sponsor, Matt Brass, carried those priorities into the legislature, arguing that Georgia could expand patient access while keeping the program firmly medical.

The road to SB 220 had been years in the making.

Georgia State Senator Matt Brass has spent years making sure medical cannabis patients are heard in Georgia. Long before the Putting Georgia’s Patients First Act, Brass sat down with patients, families, medical professionals, advocates, and others to understand the barriers they faced.

In 2018, he co-chaired the Joint Study Commission on Low THC Medical Oil Access, which heard testimony directly from patients, parents, healthcare professionals, law enforcement, businesses, and other stakeholders about how Georgia could build a workable access system.

He was also willing to push past the stigma surrounding cannabis and say plainly what he believed the testimony showed. During a 2019 Senate debate, Brass pointed to families of children with severe seizure disorders:

“Some may argue that this is not a medicine, but we heard testimony of children having 80 to 100 seizures a day and then after taking the oil, down to one per week. That leaves no doubt in my mind that this is clearly a medicine.”

Years later, Brass was still carrying that issue forward.

By 2024, Georgia patients had accumulated nearly a decade of experience with the state’s medical cannabis program. The Georgia Access to Medical Cannabis Commission’s Patient Listening Tour gave them another opportunity to spell out what they wanted changed, from broader qualifying conditions and more product choices to better registry access and protections for patients in hospice and long-term care.  

Brass turned many of those concerns into Senate Bill 220, the Putting Georgia’s Patients First Act.  The historic legislation expanded available product forms and qualifying conditions, lengthened patient registration periods, and recognized healthcare institutions as caregivers for patients receiving care.

As it moved through the General Assembly, Brass defended the legislation against opposition: 

“This state does it differently. We have put it in medical hands. We have a tight lock around those qualifying conditions, and we are taking advice from medical experts.”

That has been the through line for Brass’s approach to medical cannabis policy: meeting patients and medical professionals where they are, listening carefully, and keeping their concerns front and center through the legislative process. SB 220 ultimately drew Republican and Democratic sponsors and became law in May 2026.

More than a decade after Georgia first enacted a medical cannabis law, Brass helped carry a major reform designed around many of the issues patients had spent years asking the state to address. His Public Courage Award nomination recognizes that sustained record of listening to patients, publicly standing behind cannabis as medicine, and turning patient experience into changes in Georgia law.

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