197
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
And yeah. Okay. Like that. The
effects between marijuana and aspirin, man,
marijuana has never caused a death, and aspirin has
caused over 500 deaths a year. And you might have
a little bit of problems with memory and learning
using marijuana, but I'm sure if you took enough
aspirin, you'll have that same problem.
And as you can see on the list over
here, it -- compared to each other, it looks to me
like the marijuana would be a safer alternative
than it would to just be popping a bunch of pills.
I mean I totally do not like popping pills, and
and since I've moved back to Iowa, I don't have any
choice but to pop pills, which I don't do it
anyway. So I just suffer the consequences, deal
with it, and just go about my life, I guess.
Okay. I was reading somewhere on some
of my news I read every day how this Gil
Kerlikowske was telling somebody in Iowa about the
concerns that medical marijuana dispensaries in
California have. And I'm thinking, okay. Well,
California, there's, like, ten times more people
there than there is in Iowa, and so of course it
would be harder to regulate and keep in control
than it would be here in Iowa. I don't know.
198
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
The fact that they -- they just let
everybody and anybody open up a dispensary, that
was -- that was pretty cool because I helped open
up a dispensary in Sacramento. That was -- that
was pretty cool. But I don't know. I don't know
what to say.
Okay. And criminal activity, you
know, it shouldn't happen if there was regulated
marijuana dispensaries because you would have to
have your identification to get into the store, and
I'm pretty sure you're not going to be able to
bring a gun or anything in there if you've got your
ID in there. And rather than just selling it off
the street corner and getting into children's
hands, you would actually have to be licensed to go
into a store and buy it. And which I would think
it would be safer for the children since it's
regulated like that.
And I don't know what else to say.
I'm sure that wasn't ten minutes, but I'm just
going to go with that, I guess, because I actually
forgot my notes.
Okay. Well, here's some. Okay.
Marinol, yeah. I was supposed to say something
about Marinol too. Okay. With using marijuana, it
199
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
stops dizziness and vcmiting that are specific to
chemotherapy. It helps with regaining the
patients' weight through increase of appetite and
reducing stress or states of nausea and vomit.
I've got anotner friend who's actually
dead now. She was in California. She never used
marijuana. She had -- she had lung cancer, and she
ended up taking chemotherapy and getting sick,
losing weight, losing hair, and then she ended up
with having a stroke and getting tumors in her
brain, and that wouldn't have happened if she would
have been able to smoke marijuana. And I don't
know. Kind of wish that she would have been able
to do that earlier. And okay.
Well, I think yeah. This is what I
actually have, some kind of gastrointestinal
disorder. I don't know who's calling me here.
Yeah. My job. Yeah. So, like, gastrointestinal
disorders affect one in five Americans, and smoking
marijuana and actually, I do like to make
brownies and cookies and -- and using a vaporizer
to help with using -- I don't know -- carcinogenic
smoke, and it actually helps decrease the swelling
in my bowels which decreases the pain. And I'm
just going to let it go at that.
200
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
Oh, yeah. Okay. There's some
symptoms of cramping and abdominal pain and
inflammation of the lungs -- or lining of the large
and/or small intestines and chronic diarrhea and
rectal bleeding and weight loss. When I was in
California, all that seemed to just slow down, and
I didn't really have too much of a problem. I
could go to work and everything, which I can do
that anyway.
Cannabis is not physically addictive
like tobacco or alcohol or any other
over-the-counter drugs like Vicodin. I know a
bunch of people that -- in California they just --
they're pill poppers, man, and I don't know what
the hell that's about. And I don't know. It's
safer. I don't know.
Marijuana has never caused any deaths,
and I could see where if -- what is it, Marinol is,
like, what, a Schedule III; right? And that's just
pure straight-up THC, and then it's misslng out on
all the other -- the chemicals that are in
marijuana that is they've got cannabinoids, and
there's a CB1 and a CB2, some kind of receptor
thing, and I think there was, what, Delta 9 is what
the -- yeah.
201
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
I'm going to go. Thank you very much
for having me.
BOARD MEMBER FREY: Okay Great.
Thank. You can come and get your -- the gentleman
that was --
BOARD MEMBER FREY: Yeah.
He's got
a -- I didn't know if he wanted his microphone or
not or his recorder.
(Off-the-record discussion.)
SCOTT KREMER: I just want to hand
these to you and talk about them.
SCOTT KREMER: Good evenlng.
I want
to thank you for having these hearings.
202
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
BOARD MEMBER FREY: Could
you
please -- just for the record you can state just
your first name or state your full name.
SCOTT KREMER: So I want to thank
you,
but before I elaborate on that, permit me to
introduce myself. My name is Scott Kremer. I'm
58 years old. I was born not far from here in
Atlantic, Iowa, and raised on a farm in Cass
County.
I graduated from the University of
Iowa in 1977 with a degree in English and a
teaching certificate. I moved to California in
1979 and lived there until just two years ago when
I returned to live on my home farm. I'm living
there with my father who is now 92 years old. I
have been working as a substitute schoolteacher
since I returned home
I didn't teach while I was in
California. Instead I worked as a carpenter, then
a building contractor, but finally I changed
203
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
careers and became a paralegal. I was the case
manager for a San Francisco firm that represented
injured workers, mostly longshoremen who had been
injured on the docks.
I also spent six years working for
criminal defense attorneys. I was deeply involved
helping them with marijuana cases, and I became
something of an expert at marijuana defense. In
fact, prominent defense attorneys called me for
recommendations for expert witnesses in obscure
scientific disciplines.
In 1995 I attended the hearing in the
Kyllo case out of Oregon which was ultimately
decided in Kyllo's favor by the U.S. Supreme Court
in 2001. I recommended that Kyllo's lawyer hire a
certain infrared expert for that case. I would
like to take credit for that now because Kyllo's
lawyer blamed me when he was losing the case in
lower courts.
So I want to thank you for holding
this hearing because it strikes me as a very
reasonable approach to the medical marijuana
problem. I'm sure you're aware of the process by
which the federal scheduling of marijuana was
challenged in the 1980s by a group of activists.
204
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
The activists will forever quote the administrative
law judge's statement regarding marijuana at the
conclusion of those hearings. No doubt you've
heard it several times by now and have many copies
in the paperwork that has been submitted to you.
The interesting thing to me, however,
is the difference between that process and this
one, the difference being who is being given
jurisdiction to make a recommendation regarding
marijuana? In the federal hearings, it was the
Drug Enforcement Agency, the DEA, who made the
decision. The DEA is an elite group of drug
police.
To me asking the DEA to rule on
marijuana is like asking the fox to guard the
henhouse. The fox has a professional interest in
eating or arresting the hens, not helping them deal
with physical ailments. The hens don't typically
go to the fox and ask for medical advice. The fox
is not a veterinarian.
So it is no surprise that the DEA
ignored both the carefully presented evidence and
the strong recommendation of their administrative
law judge. They kept marijuana scheduled as a
dangerous drug with no potential medical value and
205
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
relegated it to the same category as heroin or LSD.
So it's really nice to see marijuana's
potential medical value being considered by the
Iowa Board of Pharmacy, not the Iowa Bureau of
Criminal Investigation. I think it's a testament
to some good old level-headed thinking by Iowans to
put pharmacists in charge of drug recommendations
instead of police. Police are functional experts
at maintaining public order and safety, not
biochemistry and medical matters. It seems to me
that the police should be following your guidance,
not vice versa. But at the federal level, it
hasn't worked out that way.
I voted for Proposition 215 in
California, the nation's first medical marijuana
law. I did not, however, work on medical marijuana
defenses, although I consulted with some of the
leading proponents of medical marijuana. I also
have several personal friends who have medical
marijuana recommendations from their doctors. I do
not have such a recommendation, nor have I ever
sought one.
I brought some photographs from the
website of one of the leading medical marijuana
dispensaries, the Harborside Health Center in
206
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
Oakland, California. I've never been to this
establistment since it requires a medical
recommendation to get in.
The photos are a good representation
of what the medical marijuana movement can become
if it is legal. I'm including a two-page printout
with text and photos describing Harborside's
laboratory analysis project. It seems to me that
this is the minimal standard that all marijuana
dispensaries should aspire to. Obviously, this
level of professionalism was impossible prior to
laws allowing enough freedom for it to develop.
With the help of committed activists,
police, and other officials dedicated to enforcing
the law, California has slowly worked out many of
the kinks following the 1996 passage of its medical
marijuana law. The full text of California's
Proposition 215 has only 359 words. It has often
been criticized for being too loosely worded, which
means it didn't get enough guidance.
The full text of the proposed law
currently submitted to the Iowa Senate has
10,649 words and ran to 26 single-spaced pages when
printed it. The problems the California law
didn't solve have been discovered and dealt with in
207
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
advance by the proposed Iowa statute.
For many years I've heard various
estimates of the value of illegal marijuana crops.
These estimates come fron both police and marijuana
legalization advocates and even in some instances
from agricultural agents, county agricultural
agents. Frequently the estimates rank marijuana at
or near being the highest dollar agricultural crop
in the nation. Estimates are difficult to make,
but in any case, the value is certainly high.
All that money is floating around out
there unseen, unregulated, untaxed. If you look
around at Iowa farms and consider that even a
fraction of the value of all the farm products and
services we can see, all the tractors, silos,
trucks, farms, houses, and bank accounts, is also
floating around out there in a hidden economy of
marijuana assets maybe not in Iowa but somewhere in
the country, then you get some idea just how big
the marijuana business is.
No doubt you know that marijuana or
cannabis sativa was an accepted drug in the U.S.
pharmacopeia until a wave of scare stories led to
it being hastily banned by Congress in 1937. This
was over the objection of the American Medical
208
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
Association.
Now, except for the recent creation of
legal medical marijuana markets, all of the vast
underground marijuana economy is operating without
any reasonable controls or legal safeguards. Since
the 1960s, marijuana use has burgeoned while the
drug has remained completely illegal. Nothing
suggests that criminal penalties for all marijuana
users will stop this market.
Certainly it has also been established
that many people, rightly or wrongly, will persist
in using marijuana for medical benefits they
believe it confers, regardless of the law. We can
either continue considering these people criminals
or exercise the option to bring them under legal
control. They can obey the law and still have
their marljuana, but the law can specify how many
of them get it, what they give it for, how the drug
is produced, who produces it, who sells it, how
much is taxed, when it is sold, where it is sold,
how pure it is, et cetera, et cetera.
It's rather ironic, don't you think,
that marijuana advocates are coming to you and
literally begging to be placed under legal
regulation, literally begging to give the State
209
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
power over their lives. It seems like everyone
else in the world has tried to get government out
of their hair, always complaining about government
regulation, taxes, Big Brother, and such.
But here we have a group of people who
are begging for government regulation. Yet the
only regulation the government wants to give them
is jail at great expense to the taxpayer while a
huge black market thrives wholly untaxed.
Jail hasn't worked. Let's try finding
a middle ground between jail and no law whatsoever.
Let's move forward not just to allow doctors to
recommend it but to make it possible for doctors
and pharmacists at the University of Iowa and
scientists at other schools to study the uses and
benefits. Surely tax money from the sale of
medical marijuana could be earmarked for such
purposes, possibly even producing patents on new
medicines extracted or synthesized from the variety
of cannabinoids in the plant.
Let's bring cannabis back into the
pharmacopeia where it was once a medicine for many
generations. Thank you for your time.
210
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
SCOTT KREMER: If you have any
questions, I'll be happy to hang around.
TERRY WITKOWSKI: Is there anyone
else
who has not spoken who would like to speak? Okay.
(Short recess.)
TERRY WITKOWSKI: Thank you
all for
coming. This hearing is now officially closed.
(Public Meeting concluded at
7:00pm.)
211
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
C E R T I F I C A T E
I, SueAnn Jones, Certified Shorthand
Reporter and Notrary Public in and for the State of
Iowa, do hereby certify that the foregoing is a
true and accurate computer-aided transcription of
the public meeting as taken stenographically by and
before me at the time and place indicated on the
title page;
That I am neither a relative nor employee
nor attorney nor counsel of the parties to
this action, and that I am not financially
interested in the action.
Dated this 20th day of November, 2009.
__________________________________
SUEANN JONES, CSR, RPR