by Ty Tagami | Jul 29, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — Products from marijuana and hemp are either dangerous and should be banned or amazing and should be accessible to those who need and want them, a Georgia House study committee heard Tuesday.
Lawmakers heard conflicting assertions and opinions during their first hearing ahead of possible changes to state policies for medical marijuana and hemp derivatives.
Several parents testified about children who developed schizophrenia after prolonged consumption of high-dose, off-the-shelf products.
“This is the biggest regulatory failure of my lifetime,” testified one mother, who didn’t want to be identified. She said she discovered that her son had a discount code for frequent purchases at one store.
Dr. Colin Murphy, a psychiatrist, testified that increased potency was driving induced psychosis, with fellow critics saying teenagers are especially vulnerable.
But several medical marijuana advocates testified about the relief the plant delivered for pain, allowing them to avoid addictive opioids and other drugs.
“What about the good things about cannabis? Cannabis saved my life,” said Yolanda Bennett, co-founder of the Georgia Medical Cannabis Society who suffers from a hormonal disorder.
The committee is delving into an area of policy that is as complicated as it is divisive.
It is following on stalemated attempts during this year’s General Assembly session to both increase the potency of medical marijuana and ban hemp beverages.
The area is fraught because the federal government classifies marijuana as a Schedule 1 drug, making street use illegal. Georgia legalizes distribution with a doctor’s approval.
Yet, hemp, which comes from a related plant species, is legal under a 2018 federal law that allowed the plant to be used for products like rope. That federal law also allowed sales of the intoxicating part of the plant when limited to 3% of the product’s dry weight.
That has led to a hemp boom, from beverages to gummies.
The market is further complicated by synthetic derivatives that are not regulated. Last fall, the Georgia Department of Agriculture began focused regulatory enforcement of legal hemp regulations, but it was a largely unenforced area before then.
Katherine Russell, the agency’s policy director, said the industry is difficult to regulate because it is quickly evolving. She described a Florida company that is using orange peels to create cannabidiol, or CBD, a non-intoxicating compound also found in cannabis plants.
“You can regulate cannabis all day long, but if you can source your CBD from somewhere else, then the laws don’t actually cover that,” Russell said. “So the great thing about this emerging industry is that there are entrepreneurs involved, and it very much touches on the American spirit. But it also makes it very fast moving.”
The committee’s next hearing will be Aug. 21 in Augusta.
by Ty Tagami | Jul 29, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger is initiating a four-year process that could delete the registrations of nearly a quarter million inactive voters.
“Clean voter rolls mean clean elections,” Raffensperger said Tuesday. “My promise to Georgia voters is elections that are free, fair, and fast – and we’re doing just that.”
Raffensperger’s agency will mail notices to 218,951 registered voters who have not participated since 2019. They will be scrubbed from the rolls in 2029 if they fail to respond by mail or by going online to update their status, and if they do not vote in either the 2026 or 2028 general elections.
(Voters can update their registration at the agency’s Online Voter Registration portal and My Voter Page, where they can also check whether they appear on the inactive list.)
The elections agency will soon roll out an address verification tool for use during registration.
Raffensperger has been trying to shore up confidence in Georgia’s election process, which has come under heavy criticism from supporters of President Donald Trump, who claimed without evidence that he lost the 2020 election due to cheating in Georgia.
Toward that end, Raffensperger also announced that a hand count of 282 “batches” of ballots in the recent Democratic primary runoff for the Georgia Public Service Commission had confirmed Peter Hubbard’s win over Keisha Sean Waites for District 3.
A batch comparison is one of several methods of auditing election results. It involves a comparison of hand count subtotals from identifiable batches of votes, such as from precincts, against the digital count, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
A batch comparison differs from a ballot-level count, which involves comparing randomly selected ballots to the results recorded by machines.
Georgia’s PSC runoff hand count varied from the machine count by two votes out of 13,917 cast. The inconsistency occurred in two of the batches and was within the “expected margin of human variation” and did not affect the outcome, Raffensperger’s office said.
by Ty Tagami | Jul 28, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — A Georgia man has been convicted in a Louisianna federal court for his role in a scheme that involved stringing along women online then extracting millions of dollars from them.
During a four-day trial, prosecutors presented evidence that Kenneth G. Akpieyi, 44, played a key role in defrauding women by connecting them with romantic partners on Facebook, Instagram and other social media platforms, the U.S. Attorney’s office for the Eastern District of Louisianna said Monday.
The conversations then moved to encrypted platforms, including WhatsApp, where the perpetrators asked the women to send money for fraudulent reasons, such as for charity or to help with family illnesses, prosecutors said.
Eight victims testified to total losses exceeding $3 million, prosecutors said.
Michael M. Simpson, the acting U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Louisianna, praised the FBI in New Orleans for their work on the case. Simpson also thanked the Cobb County Sheriff’s Office and the FBI in Atlanta.
Akpieyi, who lived in Marietta under the alias Phillip Anderson, used his company, KGA Autobrokers LLC, to obscure the movement of victims’ money, with funds reaching bank accounts in China, the United Arab Emirates and other countries, prosecutors said.
Akpieyi will be sentenced Nov. 5 and could get up to 20 years in prison for conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud and 20 years for conspiracy to commit money laundering. He also faces hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines.
by Ty Tagami | Jul 28, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has launched an investigation into a company accused of operating a Ponzi scheme that bilked investors while funding political campaigns.
The announcement follows a lawsuit filed in mid-July by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) against Edwin Brant Frost IV and his company First Liberty Building and Loan.
“If you engaged with First Liberty and have not yet submitted a formal complaint with the Securities Division, you are encouraged to do so using the appropriate channels on the Secretary of State’s website,” the state agency said Monday. “Individuals who contact the office will be treated confidentially.”
The agency’s Securities Division regulates the securities industry in Georgia, including investment products.
Raffensperger has already called on politicians to return any campaign contributions from First Liberty or the Frost family, which has been active in state Republican politics.
The SEC lawsuit said Frost used investor funds for more than $570,000 in political contributions.
The Georgia Republican Party said last week that it had repaid nearly $37,000 in such income to the court-appointed receiver for First Liberty.
The company raised at least $140 million from about 300 investors, and the lawsuit said Frost also used their money to pay himself and his family at least $5 million.
Raffensperger said his agency was trying to reach First Liberty investors. In addition to asking them to file a complaint, the agency would like them to fill out an online survey to help with the “fact-finding” process.
“Your responses will be kept confidential,” the form says.
by Ty Tagami | Jul 28, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — A second Republican congressman has joined the race to unseat U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff next year.
In a brief announcement on social media Monday, U.S. Rep. Mike Collins, R-Jackson, joined fellow GOP Rep. Buddy Carter, R-St. Simons, in the campaign to replace Democrat Ossoff with a Republican.
Currently, both of Georgia’s Senate seats are held by Democrats, the other by Sen. Raphael Warnock, who will be up for re-election in 2028.
Collins and Carter will face off first in the Republican primary next year. Both have aligned themselves with President Donald Trump and his MAGA base of Republican voters. Last week, another Trump-aligned candidate, Georgia Insurance Commissioner John King, suspended his candidacy, saying he saw “little path forward to the nomination.”
Collins, a trucking executive, announced his entry into the race with the words “I’m in” on X. In a second post, he described himself as a “conservative workhorse” and “America First fighter,” adding, “Chip in some cash and I’ll stay on the gas!”
Collins added a video of himself driving a semi-truck. In the video, he touts Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” and banning “boys from playing girls’ sports.” And he talks of writing the Laken Riley Act, which requires federal immigration agents to arrest, detain and deport immigrants who cross the border illegally and then commit nonviolent crimes.
Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student, was murdered last year while jogging on the University of Georgia campus. Both Ossoff and Warnock supported the bill, which Trump signed in January.
But Collins in his video calls them “California crazies.”
Democrats fired back, calling Collins a “MAGA extremist” aligned with Trump’s “toxic agenda, deep Medicaid cuts, and economic chaos.”
