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schedule, what they can pertain, but I do knew it's
a safe drug that has medicinal use, so why -- why
is it an unsafe drug?
It just -- this is a book that I'm
going to go ahead and show everyone. I'm not going
to give this to you guys, but it's called Marijuana
Is Safer So Why Are We Driving People to Drink?
And I mean marijuana has never killed anyone. So
to call it a dangerous drug is really just insane,
and I'm here -- I just -- we've seen so much go on,
and we've lived a lot. You know, I started
drinking when I was 14 and have, I would say, you
know, done a lot of stupid stuff, and whenever you
smoke, you just don't do that. You know, you have
control over your life. You can, you know, go
about your daily business and, you know, do other
things, and you know, you feel you don't -- you
don't feel like you've lost control of your life.
It's, you know, not addictive. I mean
it's probably a little addictive just because it's
so good. I'm going to go ahead and say good.
So I would also like to address the
fact that it's not a gateway drug. Marijuana
prohibition is the gateway to other drugs because
we're saying that you can't -- you know, you can't
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smoke this, so if we arrest someone for it, then
they have to go on probation. Then they have to
turn to drinking or turn to harder drugs to get it
out of your system faster because they're so
worried about being caught, you know. You know.
God forbid we smoke a harmless victimless drug.
So -- and then, you know, a1so, I'd
have to go and say whenever we send these kids --
kids can get it in schools. I know -- I know it's
being sold in schools. We are letting this happen
because we don't have an age limit on it. It's not
being, you know, regulated at all, so we're sending
kids, 16-year-old kids, to houses to buy -- to buy
these drugs, and then they're being, you know, in
the room with coke and heroin which are more
expensive, more addictive, and these are actually
harmful to society, and yet we're letting these
kids go buy their drugs -- you know, and yes, why
do kids have to have drugs? That's a good
question, but whenever they're so readily
available, you know, the temptation is there, and
people -- that's what they want.
It's going to happen. It's not going
to go away, just like alcohol when we -- you know,
when alcohol prohibition, it didn't go away.
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People -- you know, how would you like it if, you
know, you're trying to buy your alcohol and it's
cut with something? You know, just can we imagine
living like that? I'm sure that you guys have had
some drinks in your life, and you know, you know
it's more harmful than marijuana, so if you --
okay. Slow down. This is who I am. I ramble.
I'm on these little side tracks of things because I
feel so strongly about the subject.
And I understand people need it for
medical purposes. You know, like, that's, I mean,
very important. I see it all the time. My
grandmother who took care of my grandpa for two
years while he laid on his death bed, and she took
care him, and he finally passed away, and she is
now 81 pounds, can't eat, can't sleep, depressed,
and I know -- I know if she could -- if someone
just could offer her and say "Hey, you know, if you
just smoke this" and -- you know, she would be
eating. She would be sleeping. She would feel so
much better and more active to do things with
her -- with friends, and that's all.
And so anyway -- and also there is a
healthy way to smoke it, you know, through a
vaporizer. It keeps -- I've heard that it keeps
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the chemicals, the harmful chemicals, you know, in
there and just burns the THC, so it's not even --
like there's no risk of lung cancer or anything,
so -- not that that was a thlng anyway. So I'm
going to slow down. Here we go. Please hold the
laughter.
So I just -- I have so much to say and
like we -- I just -- I hate that, you know, we're
still arguing about this. It was all based upon a
lie. That's the thing. Harry Anslinger in, what,
1937 or something, he, you know, came up with this
lie. Marijuana is going to kill you, you know, if
you --
MELANIE DREHER: Hello.
This is
Dr. Dreher from Rush University, and I'm calling
the Board of Pharmacy to give testimony regarding
the medical use of marijuana.
BOARD MEMBER FREY: Yes.
This is
Susan Frey, the vice chairman of the board. We are
currently in the midst of a testimony, so could you
please hold on?
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KAITLYN DONOVAN: Now I have
to wrap
it up. So Harry Anslinger, he came up with this
lie that it kills people, that it makes you insane,
and so that's why we can't even have it anyway is
because of a lie, so how -- why can't someone just
stand up and say "Oh, sorry, we were wrong. That's
not what happens. Let's refigure this out. Let's
reclassify it."
And let's not classify to a
Schedule II because I think that's the wrong
classification anyway. I mean let's not re, like,
wrongly -- what's -- let's not reclassify it and
have it be wrong again and then two years later we
have to reclassify to a Schedule III and
Schedule IV. Let's just get it right this time,
schedule it at the right thing. Let's use all
kinds of studies that you can find.
People who just smoke it for
recreational use, I'm not talking about people --
potheads who smoked it, you know, from sun up to
sundown. I mean if that's what they want, they can
because they're probably not hurting anything, but
you know, saying for the adults who use it safely
on the -- you know, if they want to -- just like
adults can use alcohol safely and, you know, in the
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privacy of their own home, people should have the
same rights, and we all need to be equal here and
just -- I mean we need to say it's less harmful.
It should be legalized, and more importautly it
should be researched for all kinds of medical use.
There we go. I'll wrap it up.
BOARD MEMBER FREY: Could
you give the
book to the reporter so she can get the author on
that so that we could reference that for the other
board members?
KAITLYN DONOVAN: Sure.
Yeah
Actually, the author is from Marijuana Policy
Project Safer and NORML so --
(The authors of the book are Steve
Fox, Paul Armentano, and Mason Tvert.)
(Off-the-record discussion.)
BOARD MEMBER FREY: Okay.
And while
we're doing that, I think we'll go ahead with
Melanie Dreher who's on the telephone.
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Dr, Dreher, you may start your
comments at any time, and you will have ten
minutes.
MELANIE DREHER: Well, I actually
don't have ten minutes worth of remarks. I'm just
calling in to say that I have -- I'm a nurse, dean
of nursing at Rush University Medical Center and an
eptologist, and I have worked in Jamaica, West
Indies, for -- oh, almost 30 years doing research
on the -- the original medical use of cannabis or
ganja as it's called in Jamaica, marijuana as it's
called here.
And I have studied the -- this study
that we did with the -- an examination of the
chronic effects of marijuana use because at the
time that I started this study, which was in the
late -- actually early '70s, most of the research
to date has been done on the acute effects of
marijuana smoking, and there have been very little
done on the chronic effects, and there was a
movement funded by NIH at the tlme to really look
at cultures in which cannabis has been used over a
long perlod of time in which it had become part of
the culture, and Jamaica was particularly useful
because not only did it have the long-standing
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medical use, but it was also -- had taken on a
ritual use in the case of Rastafarianism.
And gan]a, as you may know, is not
indigenous to Jamaica. It comes from India, and it
was brought in in the late 1880s with indentured
labor coming from India. Since that time, it has
become very widespread in Jamaica. It is
cultivated for medicine.
When I went to study it, it was
already -- already had several medical uses
starting from early childhood, even infancy and the
treatment of colic and the discomfort associated
with teething. Then it had been used
prophylactically by women who brewed tea, marljuana
tea or ganja tea, ror their children to help them
to concentrate in school and to get them the sort
of energy that they needed for their five-mile
walks to school and so forth.
So it was considered not only a drug
of treatment but a drug of -- they wouldn't say a
drug but an herb of treatment and an herb of
prophylaxis in the sense of keeping children and
adults well as well as treating a variety of
complaints and maladies.
The first study was a study comparing
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30 chronic users, and these were men who had used
marijuana every day of their lives for the past
10 years and 30 nonusers, and that study showed no
indication that there was any serious implications
or outcomes from routine daily marijuana use.
Subsequently I went on to look at --
and this was sort of in the light of the solidified
incident in the '70s and to look at the perigenic
effects of marijuana use during pregnancy. And
again, they used the same research strategy. We
recruited 30 women in their first trimester who
were chronic marijuana users, and we matched them
with 30 women who were not users, according to age,
sex, and parity, and took a look at their
offspring, and we used a pretty standard neonatal
assessment scale that is used in this country to
test the psychoneurological dimensions of
development and actually, at three days found no
differences between the exposed group and the
nonexposed group.
At one month, we found that the --
actually the exposed babies did significantly
better in all dimensions of the Brazelton scale
than the nonexposed babies and significantly in a
couple of them. Those results were published in
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Pediatrics, I think about 1994.
By that time, some women, particularly
Rastafarian women, had been -- were being exposed
to marijuana because they had begun -- more women
had begun to smoke. When I first went to Jamaica
all those years ago, it was basically men who were
smoking. Women were drinking the tea. I think
that has changed a little bit but not much. I
think it's predominantly tea -- tea drinking as a
familial medicinal use of marijuana in Jamaica
whereas smoking tends to be used more in the ritual
way -- in the ritual context, although several
people have reported -- many people have reported
using inhalation of cannabis for the treatment of
asthma in particular or any kind of pulmonary
complaints, both adults and children who had -- oh,
upper respiratory infections and that sort of
thing.
The -- I think the -- it's important
to say that there is a culture for cannabis in
Jamaica. There are rules about who should use it
and when and the context in which it is used, and I
think probably it would be difficult to find a
Jamaican today who would consider cannabis as a
drug in that sense. They would consider it a -- in
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the sense that we know it, as a recreational drug.
They would consider it a medicine, an
herbal medicine, a natural medlcine that has both
spiritual components to it in the sense of
facilitating a communion, which is the ritual used
in Rastafarians in communing with each other and
with a God, and then of course the medicina1 use
which has many, many, many properties and -- and
dimensions.
And it's used in many forms,
inhalation, tea, tonics that are prepared with
white rum, but it's commonplace. It's oral
tradition, and it's passed down from mother to
daughter and then to her daughters as part of the
sort of household pharmacopeia.
So I would be -- I would be happy to
answer any questions you may have about this
substance.
BOARD MEMBER FREY: Oh, okay.
This is
Susan. When you talk about it being in the -- in a
ritual, are you talking about a specific set
ritual, or is that more of an individual process?
What --
MELANIE DREHER: Well, a ritual
in the
sense of -- I suppose you have to understand a
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little bit about the Rastafarian religion. It's a
male-dominated religion, and when men convene,
it's -- it actually started in the 1920s in Jamaica
where somewhat disenfranchised men, laborers
primarily, were to sit together in their Kingston
yards and talk about life and religion and reason.
And at that time there was a man
who -- named Marcus Garvey who used to come around
to all the yards and preach, and he talked about
the recreation of all black men to Ethiopia, and
that was the origin of the Rastafarian religion,
and -- so that these men who sat in their yards
smoking made the connection "All right. This is
our ritual. This is our communication witb God"
just as the -- just as wide as in the Catholic
church.
So they made that analogy of using --
smoking marijuana as the -- as -- comparing that to
the use of wine in the Cathollc church, and it does
certainly enhance their spiritual communication
with each other.
And so is it -- does it take place in
a certain -- you know, at the altar or anything
like that? No. It's a much more naturalized
religion and takes place wherever men come together
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to talk about important things in life.
BOARD MEMBER FREY: I was
just asking
for clarification because I guess, you know, that
aspect would not pertain to our discussion so --
on the female side, you're saying then that
they are the ones that use it as more medicinal?
MELANIE DREHER: The women are
the
preparers of the medicine but in the sense -- in
the sense that it is a sacred -- considered a
sacred substance. It does have a connectlon to
medicine in that regard.
So then the women are the ones who
actually are the preparers and adminlstrators of
marijuana medicine in Jamaica.
MELANIE DREHER: You're welcome.
I'm
sorry for that long-winded explanation.
ROBERT MANKE: please ask her about
comparative Apgar scores between the exposed
pregnant mommies and the neonates that came from
those pregnancies and the nonexposed pregnant
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mommies, what their Apgar scores were cornpared to
the mommies who smoked pot.
BOARD MEMBER FREY: We have
a question
from the audience that would like you to comment
on -- in your research to comment on the Apgar
numbers, Apgar ratings on exposed versus nonexposed
infants.
MELANIE DREHER: The Apgar ratings,
both the exposed and unexposed infants, were not as
high as you would find in this culture. It is not
unusual at all, especially 20 years ago, to have an
Apgar rating of seven, eight, or nine. So the -- I
would -- there were no differences in the Apgars
between the exposed babies and the nonexposed
babies.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Was there
any --
any sort of reasons that the women were taking the
tea medicinally? Was it for menorrhea or
menorrhagia, or was it specifically women's issues?
Was it for decreasing stress or to help them focus
on their daily tasks? Is there any indication in
that research of what they were taking the tea for?
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there a reason that you -- that was given for the
women using their tea? Were they using it for,
like, say, for instance, amenorrhea or was there,
you know, some specific reason that they used it on
a long permanent basis?
MELANIE DREHER: Well, the
monthly-using women, there were a variety of
women -- of reasons. A few women who used it in a
manner not unlike a man used it. They used it --
they were primarily of Rastafarian persuasion.
They used it ritually, occasionally recreationally.
But the -- the other end of the
30 women were a number of women who used it
medicinally, specifically medicinally, and mainly
for the nausea associated with pregnancy, also with
the insomnia of pregnancy and with the -- what they
would describe as the lack of energy that they had
when they were pregnant.
So it would seem that the exposed
babies actually made -- not significantly so, but
they weighed a little more than the nonexposed
babies, and when I mentioned this to some of the
mothers, they said "Well, of course, because we eat
more," and I think that is very true. They had
better appetltes and were able to control the
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typical nausea associated with pregnancy in the
early stages.
MELANIE DREHER: No. I
think that --
you know, people ask me all the time whether I
think marijuana should be legalized, and I have
been of the opinion for a long time that this is --
this is much ado about nothing. It is -- compared
to tobacco and compared to alcohol, this is such a
benign substance.
It does not seem to make a difference
in either the health or the productivity of people
in Jamaica. It seems to make no difference in
terms of exposure during pregnancy. And then the
specific element, because we looked at these
children, again, at age five, both groups of
children, and could find absolutely nothing that
linked their development with their exposure during
pregnancy.
And I -- I certainly believe that and
would strongly support the decriminalization of
cannabis, and now -- now that we understand about
the endocannabinoid system that this is documented.
It's researched. Probably couldn't have been done
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in this country.
Now that we have a knowledge of why
cannabis is a good medicine, someching that
Jamaicans have known for years, I think it's time
to seriously revisit this product, to understand
and be able to dispense it as a medicine legally
and and to decriminalize the other uses of -- of
marijuana.
ROBERT MANKE: Hi. I'm Bob
Manke, and
what a privilege it is to come on after Dean
Dreher. Wow. Does it sink in to you that what she
told you was that the most trusting, vulnerable
members of society, a little fetus in mommy's womb,
is not harmed by smoking cannabis. Believe me,
that's what she's telling you. That's exactly what
she's telling you. There's no harm to a fetus in a
mommy who smokes pot. Zip. Her Apgar scores
proved 1t, and they have suppressed her evidence
again and again and again, and this is a highly
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professional woman. I am thoroughly honored to be
on the podium anywhere even close to her.
Folks, I'd like to show you something
here. This is what I talked about a little bit ago
about having for evidence. This is an OMMA card,
Oregon Medical Marijuana Act card, and this means
that Bob Manke is legal as I speak to possess a
pound and a half of pot. Can grow six plants to
any height that I want. I can have 12 simultaneous
plants that are nonflowered in the house also.
Listed on here is my caregiver and my
grower and myself, and right now waiting on me in
Oregon is a half pound of high-grade trinity nug,
and if wanted to go out and smoke that, this says
I can do it. The federal government says they're
not going to bother me for that. Folks, I need
that here. This is my home.
In February or March of this year, I
was out in Oregon to visit my mother who's dying of
cancer, and my wife went with me. In that period
of time, she was able to observe me become a legal
cannabis user and actually use cannabis in front of
her, which is exactly what happened. She is a
highly professional gerontology nurse. She became
the third shift relief supervisor for the federal
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hospital in Des Moines and was so for years. She's
retired now.
She veri professionally watched me,
and she saw my use of this particular one right
here, this is oxycodones. Okay? This is an active
script for me right now. I was just filled just a
few days ago. 10-22. Okay? This is active drugs.
I almost would have not touched that jar. In the
two months that I was there. I almost wouldn't have
touched it. And she saw that, and it changed her
mind what she saw. She saw objective data for this
nurse, and this is a woman who would jail you for
smoking pot. Trust me, she definitely would do
this kind of stuff. She's not happy with people
who break the law. But she saw something there
that changed her heart.
About a month ago -- now about two
months ago, she had a major stomach surgery, and in
the course of that preop, I had serious discussions
as her husband with the surgeon on options, you
know, and he met me. He talked with me very
seriously for about 15 minutes.
After the surgery approximately three
weeks postop, Nancy went in and was conferring with
her surgeon, and he told her that he saw me on TV
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at this meeting in Des Moines, and he was very
interested in this, and she had a change of heart,
folks. He asked her what did she think? And she
told him about what happened in Oregon to me right
in front of her, objective data, and she had a
change of heart. This is wonderful.
Okay. I want to mention a few things
about me. I am a nursing assistant. I've been --
I've worked in two different hospitals, three
nursing homes here in Iowa. I was promoted from an
NA 2 to an NA 3 in the federal hospital. And
nursing assistant work is not for everybody. It's
not. I've had you name it allover my shoes, and
I'm telling you right now, I loved what I did. And
it's too bad that I'm so hurt because I wanted to
go back so bad for this.
I mentioned the last time,
particularly the first time that I saw you in
Des Moines, that my grandmother taught me
herbology, and this was a conversation in which she
taught me in 1965 about thistles and dandelions and
things like that, and growing up against the side
of the house was an indigenous Iowa marijuana
plant. She didn't plant it. It just grew there by
itself. It's Iowa. And she told me, and I'll
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remember this forever. That is for women troubles,
migraines, and the pukes. You make a tea out of
it.
I want to take us to 1964 now. And in
1964 my mother worked as a nursing assistant also.
I was just a kid. And she came home one day and
told me -- she was pretty shook up. She saw in
this nursing home a room on the third fleor, and
this will not make you proud to be an American when
you hear this. That room was divided in half with
chicken wire, and built into that room was a door
also made out of chicken wire and probably
two-by-twos. It was a crude thing.
Behind that door was an oak plank with
holes about this big around, and leather straps
were on this God-awful thing. Okay? If you were a
bad patient -- okay? -- who's going to decide that
if not the help? -- you were forced up to this
room, and you were sat on this God-awful thing and
strapped to this board until they decided you'd
calmed down. Can you imagine the decubitus such an
ugly thing would cause?
Okay. Let that -- let that just sit
in your mind a minute because we don't do that
anymore. Medical protocol and laws have changed.
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We recognize the inherent cruelty and the
destruction of such a behavior as a part of our
medical history here in Iowa. We've changed that.
Okay? That snapshot has kind of gone away. We
have process. All right?
I want to take us back a little
farther in time now to 1937. And marijuana drug
laws were forming a snapshot, and you remember the
Iowa City art student who showed us the picture of
that marijuana drug dealer, and he had a needle
that looked like it was about this long, and he was
putting it into a white woman's arm, and marijuana
was supposed to be in that? Well, that's another
snapshot, and that's a piece of our nation's
history.
Those -- those horrible
disinformations that were spread to us were made by
a bunch of people who entered our federal
government with the purpose not of serving us but
of serving themselves, and what did they serve
themselves with? They served themselves with lust
of power over other people, and they got paid.
They got a federal pension, and to this day that
snapshot is stlll with us right now, and it's got
to be changed, folks, because that snapshot is
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enslaving us to this day.
That horrible thing was intensified by
Ricrard Nixon, I might add. And I'm just going to
ask you, when will you take these awful straps off
of me? My butt is sore, and I'm in constant pain
and fear because I am compelled to still be inside
this awful fraud of a picture. When will you take
the straps off of me? When can I be free to obey
my grandmother's good advice?
Folks, it's so bad, over
850,000 people were arrested, detained, jailed,
probated, imprisoned, fined in the last 12 months.
We incarcerate more people for pot here in America
than Europe with over 100 million more people do
for all drugs, all their crimes. When will you
turn this snapshot into an honest protocol?
We rely on you. We need you to do
this. You're really important to us. I know that
you've got real responsibility in front of you.
I'm going to give you a Bible verse now because I
really do understand this. Romans 14:22, blessed
is he who does not condemn himself for what he has
approved. There's a weight on you to really do the
right thing. Believe me, know that.
And there is danger in what you do
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because of the LD50 of these horrible drugs that
you have. They kill people.
In 1998 my daughter was murdered here
in Council Bluffs. I didn't want to come to this
city, believe me. She died alone in a bathroom of
a drug overdose that the State of Iowa forced on
her. Go see Manke v. Iowa. Believe me, they were
hot with it. They shouldn't have been giving her
that awful crap.
If you think that I could appear in
front of you people and suggest another drug for
you that could possibly do this evil shit to
somebody else, almighty God forbid my mouth ever be
born into this world. I truly believe that this is
safe. The LD50 of marijuana is incredibly safe.
It's just south of fresh air. Melanie Dreher just
got on the phone and told you it can't hurt babies
in mommies' bellies. How much more benign can
something get?
I'm going to tell you that for me as a
pain patient that marljuana fits a kind of a
missing link between NSAIDs and opiates. Okay?
Like NSAIDs, it's not addictive, but it's more
powerful at pain control.
Now, we pain patients have something
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that we call break-through paln. God help us.
That's just no fun at all, and I've had it happen
so many times. That's why I showed you that box of
Fentanyl tabs. And what does the Fentanyl do when
I have a break-through pain that goes past this
stuff? Well, it doesn't make me drunk. It knocks
me out.
That's what the morphine did for three
days at a crack until I made them stop. I've had
morphine psychosis, folks. The second week of coma
that I had in Iowa City, believe me, this is the
time I thought that I'd been kidnapped by fake
nursing assistants and fake nurses, and if I looked
really hard at the nursing -- at the medical
equipment, I could see that it was made out of
cardboard boxes and Christmas tree lights. I could
see the ceiling tiles. They had blue LEDs in them,
and they would wink at me. Oh, yeah, folks. I was
gone.
And how gone was I? In the middle of
the night soaked with sweat, I would be leaning up
in the bed at a 45 degree angle. God have mercy.
I have a broken spine. I can't do that. And I'd
be tearing the IVs out of my arm, and that's when I
realized, "Oh, my God, I've just flipped out" and
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stopped myself.
Folks, if we had been able to give Bob
Manke cannabis right there, we could have cut back
this opiate use. We would have calmed me down. I
wouldn't have had the psychosis. I just truly
believe this. This stuff has medicinal value in
our hospitals, in our pain clinics.
I want to use my dad eyes for just a
minute and imagine -- thank you -- and imagine a
nursing home that doesn't have to rely on SSRIs,
which are the most addictive drug on the face of
this planet. They're very dangerous. SSRIs are
very dangerous drugs. Imagine a nursing home in
the future where Mom and Dad don't have to take
some big dose of opiates or a big dose of SSRIs.
No, they're not sitting around smoking the bong.
You eat this stuff. Okay?
ROBERT MANKE: Okay? Yes.
And I'm
telling you it's safe, folks. My mom would never
take pot in any form. I'm sorry. She's been
indoctrinated. It's a done deal but -- and that's
too bad because she's dying of cancer, and it could
do her some good. Okay?
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When will you folks help us turn this
snapshot of marijuana users having this long needle
coming in white women's arms? Oh, my God, what an
ugly picture. You've got a burden on you. I
understand that. I really do. Dr. Melanie
Dreher --
ROBERT MANKE: Yes, I will.
Dr. Dreher brings forward that mommies in all three
trimesters of pregnancy can safely smoke cannabis.
When will you take my straps off? When will you
let my people go? Thank you. God bless your Army.
ROBERT MANKE: I'd like to let
you
have a copy of this, but I'd like to get that back.
That is a legal document.
BOARD MEMBER FREY: Okay.
Speaker
No. 9. Terry, do we have a Speaker No. 9? I'm not
seeing Speaker No. 9. We'll go to Speaker No. 10.
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GEORGE McMAHON: Well, I've been
to
all four hearings, and I've stayed as long as I
could and listened to everything I could, and my
intent was -- from the beginning was to get you
guys the evidence that I think you wanted and I
hope you wanted.
GEORGE McMAHON: Oh, I'm George
McMahon, And I think we've managed that. I think
you have a good case. And I would like then to
tell the story that think all of you are
probably -- all the pharmacists here are probably
familiar with, perhaps in the little bit different
circumstance, and that's the patient -- another
patient's scory, not my own.
We'll say G. J., north central Iowa,
called last night. A mother, a lady in her 50s
recently let go from a job she'd had five years
because of health reasons which she got because she
was released from a 20-year job just prior to
starting that one for health reasons. Twice for
health reasons.
She's still getting the same treatment
from the doctors. And it hasn't helped. She's
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just been recently involved in a month stay in the
hospital and I think two or three near-death
experiences. And I'm pretty sure that I've stood
at the counter and heard pharmacists help patients
one after another. Not every -- every line, but
you know, when I go in and my friend says to Joe,
"Hey, Joe, these pills are $28. And I know you
only got seven."
"Oh, yeah. You know what? So-and-so
returned some the other day," and I watched him
walk right back to the drug counter and count them
out of the new bin and hand them to Joe. I've seen
that more times than I can count, so I think we've
got you on our side. We've given you the evidence.
I hope you see it the same way we do.
I'm pretty sure you're familiar with
those stories, and anybody I know that is is on our
side, and we think things will be better with your
help. We think we've furnished the evidence to you
now that, you know, it's not a chance -- you don't
have to go look by chance and see what was credible
and what wasn't credible or what was replicable,
what studies were actually done in the correct
ways. They're there. You can read them. You can
see how they were done, and they're in the terms
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and the terminology that you'll understand. Maybe
a lot of us in the audience wouldn't.
And then when you add to that your
human feature, and I mean that all of us got a
pretty tied-together future. When you add to that
that you are people that are trying to help other
people, we thank you for your diligence. Thank
you.
BOARD MEMBER FREY: Thank
you. I'll
back up. Is Speaker No. 9 in the room? Okay. Do
we have any others, Terry? Speaker 11 then.
JOHN Q. CUSTOMER: My name
is John Q.
Customer. I have read that if a person didn't come
down here and tell why they needed medical
marijuana that if it was passed, my condition
wouldn't be included. Of the ones that I know of,
glaucoma, I don't have Radiation, I don't get
that because I don't have cancer, but I have what's
called Meniere's disease. And it has taken away
the hearing in my left ear. It has severed the
balance nerve on my left side, so if you see me
kind of wobble, I'm not a weeble. just wobble.
If don't tell you what this medical
marijuana does for me and you don't include it,
then I will continue to be a criminal in the State
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of Iowa and in the United States.
I may look like your typical 1960s
stoner, but I'm not. My faith is why I look the
way that I do. I'm of Hebrew descent. I'm of the
House of Ruben. That's why I wear red. I have a
brother whose name is Judah, and he currently kind
of runs the entire world economic system, and I'm
really upset about that, but you know, he's my
little brother, and you know, he pulls a little
more weight than I do. All I can do is stand up
here and tell my story.
I've had Meniere!s for ten years.
Meniere's is nothing that you would wish on your
worst enemy. When I first had symptoms of it, I
thought I was drunk. But I knew that couldn't be
because I'd quit drinking ten years before that.
But yet it gave me this dizziness. It gave me this
nausea. It completely incapacitated me.
And it was probably flve years into
having those symptoms, into having vertigo, into
falling down on the floor and screaming like a
nine-year-old little girl and puking for hours and
hours and hours that almost drove me insane.
I've suffered this and survived this
raising three children by myself, holding down a
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job, not knowing then, because I didn't go to a
doctor until I was probably six years lnto it, and
my children got to watch me laying on the kitchen
floor when it was time to be going to school
incapacitated, unable to get up off the floor. And
thank goodness they were good kids. They are to
this day. They were very adult even at very young
ages.
They maintained the status quo and got
their own butts dressed, got their own butts fed,
and gct off to school while they just stepped over
me on the kitchen floor because if you do see me
fall down and scream like a little girl and start
puking, there's absolutely nothing you can do.
There's absolutely nothing I can do.
There was nothing I could do until a
year ago In December, almost a year ago in
December. I have a friend that I went to high
school with who is surviving -- I can't tell you
right now -- a form of lymph node cancer, and he
has to go in for chemotherapy every six weeks for
the rest of his life. I'm 53. He's 55. So you
can imagine what his life is like.
And last December I was up at his
house, and we were visiting, and he's known that
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I've had this for quite a while, and he's only been
surviving cancer now for two years, and as we were
talking, he asked me, he says "Well, you know,
you're a stoner from way back. Why don't you just,
you know, take a little toke." Yeah, right. Like,
you know, I m laying on the ground puking my guts
out. The first thing I'm thi~king is lig~t up.
No That's the farthest thiag from my mind. had
quit smoking years ago because I had a family to
raise was stuck with three little kids.
And he had told me with his chemo that
when he would get so sick that none of the pain
medication or the medlcation for the chemo would
help him with the nausea, a friend at the Cancer
center turned him on to medical cannabis. And I
just kind of laughed at him. "Gee, you're out of
your mind, dude."
"No. I'm telling you. It's true."
"Well, I don't know where I would get
any. I wouldn't even begin to know."
"Well, here, friend. Have some." So
I had it next to my bed and thought, you know what?
I'll give it a try, but that's the last thing I can
think of while I'm on the floor puking or even
getting ready to puke.
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But sure enough, one Saturday
afternoon I was kicked back listening to the radio,
and all of a sudden, the room started spinning, and
I started feeling in the pit of my stomach like,
oh, no. I'm in big trouble real fast. Not only
real fast but, like, right now. If I don't get to
the foot of my bed and get my puke bowl, I'm going
to be puking all over the floor.
I made it to the side of the bed. I
got ahold of the puke bowl, and just as got ahoid
of the puke bowl and was headed for the end of the
bed, I seen on my nightstand this marijuana that my
friend had given me. I hadn't smoked for years.
And I thought, you know what? I'm not going to go
through this again. I'm going to try something.
So I lit it up. I got three puffs out
of it. And I don't think I even got the exhale
out, and I was at the foot of the bed, and I was
just starting to ralph like you wouldn't believe,
and after the third time I ralphed, it was over.
No nausea, no spinning, no vertigo, nothing. I
didn't even feel high. I was very thankful. I was
already on my knees. Iwas very thankful and I
verbalized it.
But I thought, well, maybe it was my
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prayers. Maybe it wasn't the marijuana. I mean
that just -- it seems too incredible. It seems way
too incredible. I'll thank the Almighty for, you
know, taking it away but maybe next time. We'll
see what happens.
Well, next time was only a couple
weeks later when like a dumb idiot I had a banana,
and I was cold by my doctor right across the river
"Don't eat any ripe fruit." Okay. Well, I made
that mistake eating a ripe cantaloupe. Next day I
was puking my guts out.
Well, this particular day -- it was
again on a Saturday -- I wanted a banana for
breakfast. And after I bit the tip off, my mind is
telling me, dude, spit that out. No. I want it.
I haven't had a banana in forever. I'll just have
the tip. Well, it was overripe, and it tasted
really good, and I thought I'll be okay. It's just
one bite.
The next morning, 7 o'clock, I was
awakened in my sleep because I was dizzy. Made it
to the bathroom. By the time I got back to my
room, I knew I was in trouble. I grabbed my bowl,
and I hit the foot of the bed, and I started puking
at 7:30. I did not get done until 10 o'clock that
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night. All day every moment of all those hours I
was ralphing. The only thing I could do was drink
water just so I had something to ralph.
This is from an ear disease called
Meniere's that they don't know what causes it, and
they don't know what to do to cure it. There is
nothing they can do. So they offered absolutely no
belp whatsoever.
For nine years I suffered with this,
and the only option they gave me was look at your
sodium level and make sure that you try and keep
your sodium intake below a thousand milligrams a
day.
All right. It doesn't look like too
many people in here are calorie counters, but if
you count calories, you can also see sodium just
about matches. A thousand milligrams of sodium a
day, folks, that's eating fresh fruits and
vegetables. I got a perfect home. I can go to
Subway, and I can eat a Subway sandwich, but I dare
not eat anything else for a couple of days because
it will build up. That salt, that sodium, that
attracts water. My ear grabs that salt, that
sodium, and grabs that water, and boom, the next
thing I know, I'm on the ground screaming like a
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little girl puking my guts out.
Since last December, I have had six
major attacks that were thwarted within the first
three puffs on a marijuana cigarette. Nine years,
folks, I suffered. Nine years trying to raise
three children alone, trying to hold down a job,
and what did the medical professional people give
me? Nothing. Not even hope. "There's nothing we
can do for you. Just watch your sodium intake."
Well, I watch my sodium intake, but
you know what? It still doesn't help because out
of the clear blue sky in the middle of the night, I
can be awakened in a full-blown Meniere's attack.
I see two of you. And the room is spinning like
you wouldn't believe. And I scream like a little
girl, and I start puking my guts out.
Even after it started, taking two to
three puffs off of a mariJuana cigarette, and it's
done. It's over. It's stopped. I can function.
I can feel it in my head still spinning, but it's
not affecting my eyes. It's not affeoting my
balance. I can function. I can get up. I can
walk without falling over. No nausea, no puking.
It's all done. And so am I. Thank you.
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Okay. We have no other speakers that
have signed in. I will go back to the beginning of
the list to see if any of those people are here
now. Shane Prokop? Brenda Peterson or Steve
Gooch? Okay. With that, we will wait until we
have another speaker.
(Short recess.)
BOARD MEMBER FREY: Hi there.
If you
would, at least give your first name and, if you
wish, where you're from.
KEVIN SAWYER: Okay. All right.
Yeah. My name is Kevin Sawyer. I live here in
Iowa now. For the last 20 years, I was living in
California where I had a medical marijuana license
for -- I don't know. I had some kind of a colon
problem that causes internal and external
hemorrhoids and stuff. I thought it was IBS. I
thought it was colon cancer. And they -- I don't
know.
I was prescribed a medical marijuana
license, and then since then, my -- my symptoms --
I don't know. From what the doctor told me, the
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cannabinoids in the THC reduce the swelling, and
and I didn't have as much problem and the pain,
just didn't have as much pain.
And I moved back to Iowa closer to my
family, and now I don't have access to medical
marijuana and -- which my symptoms actually have
started to flare up again. Thanks.
And what I wanted to come here today
and talk about was the fact that -- I don't know
Pharmaceutical drugs like Marinol and there's --
what else is there? There's Ibuprofen has, like, a
chance to kill you, and aspirin will kill you, and
I know a bunch of people with that -- that had
surgery on their shoulder for, I think -- one of
them had a tumor in their shoulder, and another one
has -- I don't know -- some kind of cancer in her
shoulder, and they've had surgeries on them, and
they seem to flare back up.
And they give them all sorts of, like,
Vicodin and Percocet, I think. I don't know. I
mean really hard-core drugs that are just crazy out
there which they -- you could actually die from
that kind of stuff, and -- and I don't know. I
talked to them about getting the medical marijuana
license, and they got one, and they seem to be
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doing pretty good with that. I don't know. I just
kind of left my paperwork so -- oops.
Okay. So anyway, the benefits and
effects of marijuana in treating a number of
diseases like glaucoma, insownia, anxiety, panic
attacks, depression, rheumatism, gastrointestinal
dysfunctions, ulcer, cholera, cancer, epilepsy,
bronchitis, and asthma. Those can all be treated
with medical marijuana which is a safer drug than
most of the -- all of the drugs that the
pharmaceuticals are just giving out.
It's, like, seems like the -- the -- I
don't know. The physicians are, like, heavily
giving the pharmaceuticals to people just because
they make profit off of it somehow. I don't know.
And there's, like, all sorts of uses
for marijuana. It helps anything from -- I don't
know. Just from swelling and in your joints and in
your bones and in your muscles, and there's really
no side effects from that either. Okay? You might
have a side effect. You might get happy. You
might get tired. You might get hungry. You're not
supposed to drive a car on it, but then again,
you're not supposed to drive on Vicodln, which I'm
sure people do that all the time.