P R O C E E D I N G S

LLOYD JESSEN:  Good morning and
welcome to the first public meeting on medical
marijuana.  This hearing is being held by the Iowa
Board of Pharmacy pursuant to Iowa Code
Section 124.201(1).  I am Lloyd Jessen, the
executive director of the board.

With me today are two board members.
To my left, Verne Benjamin, a pharmacist and the
chairperson of the board from Argyle, Iowa, and to
my right, Ann Diehl, a nurse practitioner and
public member from Osceola, Iowa.  Also present
today are board staff, Debbie Jorgenson to my far
right and then in the audience Roger Zobel, Dennis
Dobesh, Jean Rhodes, Jennifer Tiffany, and Charity
Harman.  I'm sorry.  And also Jim Wolfe.

SueAnn Jones of Johnson Reporting
Services, Limited is serving as the certified
shorthand reporter for this hearing, and she's at
my far left.

The purpose of this hearing is to
receive information from the public.  A transcript
of all comments that are received at today's
hearing will be reviewed by the five board members
who are not present today.

Iowa law imposes upon the board the
duty to periodically recommend to the legislature
changes in controlled substance schedules.  The
board views this statutory responsibility with
great seriousness, both because of the specificity
of Iowa Code Chapter 124 and because marijuana use
and the use of drugs in general is a sensitive
medical, social, and political issue.

Any board recommendation for changes
to the controlled substance schedules in Iowa will
be preceded by a thoughtful review and analysis of
the most helpful and current scientific information
available to the board.

In making a recommendation to the
legislature regarding marijuana, the board will
consider the following 12 factors: No. 1,
marijuana's actual or relative potential for abuse;
No. 2, marijuana's pharmacological effect; No. 3,
current scientific knowledge regarding marijuana;
No. 4, the history and current pattern of abuse of
marijuana; No. 5, the scope, duration, and
significance of abuse of marijuana; No. 6, the risk
to the public health from moving marijuana from a
Schedule I to a different controlled substance
schedule; No. 7, the potential of marijuana to

This hearing will be held according to
the following ground rules and will proceed in the
following manner:  Both proponents and opponents of
medical marijuana will be allowed to speak.  All
speakers must come to the stage and speak into the
microphone.  If anyone is unable to make it up onto
the stage, we will provide you with a hand-held
microphone.

Speakers should speak slowly and
clearly so their comments can be accurately
recorded.  Speakers need to identify themselves on
the record.  They should at a minimum provide their
first name.  Full names and addresses would be
appreciated but will not be required.

If speakers are representing an
organization or are speaking on behalf of an
organization, they should state that before making
their comments.  Speakers who wish to offer
exhibits or written materials to the board need to
have them properly identified for the record.
Testimony that references an exhibit should
identify the exhibit number.

Depending on the number of people who
wish to speak at today's hearing, time limits will
be imposed.  In general, each person will be
allowed a minimum of five minutes to speak.  If
feasible, additional time may be allowed.  However,
the board wants to ensure that every person who
wishes to speak receives an opportunity to do so.

Speakers will be called according to
the order on our sign-up sheet.  Some speakers
reserved time prior to today's hearing, and they
will provide their comments as previously
scheduled.  Some speakers have also requested
additional time.  All requests for additional time
will be allowed as circumstances permit.

The board wishes to remind everyone
that this hearing is not an opportunity for debate.
We are here today to receive comments concerning

Please be aware that we are not here
to receive comments regarding the legalization of
marijuana for recreational use.  Speakers are also
reminded to avoid repetitious or irrelevant
comments.  Speakers should be as short and concise
as possible.

In addition to receiving oral comments
at today's hearing, the board welcomes and
encourages written comments.  Any comments or other
information received at today's hearing will be
public information and may be referred to or
referenced in reports or recommendations issued by
the board to the Iowa legislature.

This hearing will be in session until
7 p.m. this evening.  We will take a lunch break
from noon to 1 p.m.  We will also take two
15-minute breaks during the afternoon.

Are there any questions from anyone?
Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE:  The information I
received suggested that it was a minimum of ten
minutes, so I prepared ten minutes of -- of speech.

LLOYD JESSEN:  We will try to
accommodate that.  We had announced five to ten
minutes, and so we'll try to accommodate that.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE:  Thank you.

GEOFF GREENWOOD:  For members of the
media and also for the reporter, could you ask the
speakers to spell their names?

LLOYD JESSEN:  Yes, we will.  Oh, yes.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE:  Could you speak
closer to the mic?  I'm hearing impaired.  I didn't
get half what you said.  Thank you.

LLOYD JESSEN:  Okay.  Our next public
hearing will be held from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. on
Wednesday, September 2 in Reunion Hall at the Music
Man Square in Mason City, Iowa.

We will now begin with our first
speaker who is Dr. Joe McSherry.

JOE McSHERRY:  Honorable Chair Vernon
Benjamin and members of the board, present and
absent, and Director Jessen, thank you for the
opportunity to address this group.

I am Joe McSherry, M-c-S-h-e-r-r-y.  I
didn't copy my CV to you, but I was born in
Washington, D.C. in 1943, graduated in physics from
Harvard in 1965 with an M.D. and a Ph.D. from

Did lots of doctoring and research
things, but most importantly for this group, in
2002, I participated in a study committee that was
created by the legislature -- and cleverly, they
did not include any legislators -- to consider the
problem of medical marijuana because the
legislature didn't know what to do about it.

And the committee was relatively
balanced.  We had a person from the AG's office and
a person from the state's attorney's,
representative of the police chief's organization,
and a judge as well as two doctors appointed by the
medical society -- I was one of them -- and
patients and some patient advocate groups.

And we took testimony and heard lots
of stuff from the people who wrote the Institute of
Medicine report which I'm going to recommend to you
at least several times from 1999, but it is a great
way to get up to a base line.

There were 13 conclusions of this
committee, I would say, and two of them were agreed
to by everyone.  The law-enforcement people
couldn't get around our recommendations regarding
how to circumvent the federal law.  There seemed to

The meat of why I'm here, though, is
why would you approve marijuana given that you have
Marinol already?  The usual concern of people is
Marinol is a combination sesame oil and THC, and
there are two reasons why it's not a useful
medicine for the most part.

One is it only has THC in it, and GW
Pharmaceuticals that makes an oral mucosal medicine
called Sativex did a great deal of research, and
just straight THC is not the right way to provide
the benefits of cannabis.  There are many -- there
are 60, 70 cannabinoids in cannabis.  Most of them
are not psychoactive.  THC is very psychoactive and
really limits the use of Marinol or for anything
for any of those benefits from cannabis.

Cannabidiol, on the other hand, is not
psychoactive, actually counteracts a lot of the

So the absence of -- or only using the
most toxic element in the marijuana is one reason
Marinol is not a perfect drug.  It's only useful
for those who take the medicine orally and take THC
only.

The other significant factor is that
it's taken orally, and when you inhale a drug, you
get almost instant blood levels, and that's
important for a lot of the people who use
marijuana; for instance, for pain.  And there's a
little graphic which I've given to the group here,
but basically when you treat pain, you treat a base
line level of pain, and you usually use opiates and
long-acting substances for that.

But people also have break-through
pain which is characterized as something that lasts
30 minutes to an hour.  And if you try to treat
that with things like Percodan and it comes on
suddenly and you can't anticipate it, the Percodan
kicks in after the pain has already gone away, and

The pharmaceutical industry has tried
to treat this with Fentanyl fizzies and lollipops,
little things that go in through their mouth.  It
still takes 20 minutes to get any kind of relief.
If they develop -- and I thiink they're working on
an inhalational form of Fentanyl that's going to be
almost as fast as heroin with all of the side
effects and risks of abuse of very rapid onset
drugs which are highly addictive.

Marijuana goes in very rapidly, but in
terms of its addictive potential, it's not the same
order of magnitude.

And another case where this is
similarly important, to people with nausea.  And
again, when you hear patients testify, you'll hear
that when they're sick and throwing up, they can't
take medicine at that particular point, and on the
other hand, you can inhale cannabis and get the THC
value, which has been well studied.  It works as a
5-HT3 blocker as well as working in the central
nervous system with cannabinoid receptors which
reduce the nausea component.

The 5-HT3 blockers is what the
pharmaceutical industry uses to control vomiting.

On the third page, also have
included for you some graphs, and these are in
the -- I left Mr. Jessen with the -- the references
that I brought for this, but when you take THC
orally, only 6 percent of it gets into the blood.
And how much gets into the blood is highly
unpredictable.

The top graph on that page shows a
large rise.  It's a solid line.  That's an inactive
metabolite of THC.  The dashed line is an active
metabolite, and the dotted line down there barely
getting off ground zero on the left-hand side of
blood levels on the bottom is time.

The THC very rarely gets absorbed,
which is why in studies people often find that
patients who are complaining of toxicity don't have
measurable levels in their blood.  If you're going
to take it at bedtime and you're going to sleep
through any intoxication you get, it's a
potentially very useful way of delivering the
medicine.

If you look at the next graph down,

So when you inhale it, it goes in.
It's redistributed in the body so that the effects
of the cannabis or the THC, I should say, last for
a couple of hours.  But the -- the ability to get
it in very quickly is very important to people with
nausea, break-through pain, and things like that.

On the next page I have another -­
these are graphs swiped out of those articles of a
study of when doctors give medicine, we like to
give 325 milligrams of aspirin or something we know
what we're doing.  We know it's the right dose.  It
should take care of people.

And when you inhale things, you don't
really know how much goes in or how much stays
unless you do a lot of complicated measurements,
and so it happens that tobacco was found 40 years
ago.  People who smoked smoked to get a level of
nicotine, so if you want to sell more cigarettes,

The similar situation exists with
smoking cannabis.  No matter what you buy on the
street, illegal market, from the pharmacy, or
wherever else, you'll inhale to get an effect.  And
so this is a study that was done with NIDA-approved
THC cigarettes of three different strengths, one
1.7 percent THC, which is kind of like modified
grope (phonetical), 3.4 percent THC cigarette,
which is probably standard Mexican-grade stuff, and
I don't know what they call these things nowadays,
but the 6.8 percent stuff is probably like Acapulco
gold.

In the left-hand column, the vertical
axis is carbon monoxide.  And the -- there is also
the open squares.  The closed squares is the smoked
variety.  They cut each of these cigarettes in
half, and one day they didn't smoke the cigarette,
and the other day they did through a vaporization
system, which is a much preferable system.

But the lowest doses, they get a lot
of carbon monoxide basically from smoking, and they
still get quite a bit of the 3.4 percent dose and

So the fact that the pot you get today
if you're lucky is not the pot your grandfather got
or father got actually is the wrong way of putting
it because the stronger the cannabis, the less
you'll smoke, the less you'll get the polycyclic
hydrocarbons, the less you'll get the carbon
monoxide.

On the right-hand column is the
subjective levels these people achieved with a
vertical line being their visual analog scale of
how intoxicated or high or whatever they were, and
it's apparent that they all, no matter which kind
of cigarette you get, you go up to about a 70 on
that scale rating.

Again, I don't recommend smoking.  I
don't recommend smoking over vaporization
particularly, and this was done with a vaporizer
that was made by a German medical equipment
manufacturer, and I see their name all the time in
the operating room where I work a lot because they
make the monitors in that room.

But I would also briefly address the
downside risks.  And for the patients, there are
none.  Basically, I've included in there a couple

I could -- I could -- they would
probably be a lot higher if I brought all the
articles that have accumulated since 2002 when I
started paying attention to these things.

And for people with neurogenative
diseases, again, this is another area that's
growing rapidly in terms of research that's
available in humans.  There's lots of rat research,
and again, I would say the Institute of Medicine
report, terrific way to find out where animal
research is at, where human research was at in
1999, and there has been a lot of progress.  But
that's -- the base line there is not to be ignored.

And they were the people who
recommended or told us that there were medical uses
back then in 2002.  And the only downside was
smoking.

MS patients, people with inflammatory
disease, it's a terrific anti-inflammatory.  It
works directly on the immune system through the
cannabinoid-2 receptor and turns down inflammation

One of the things that everybody who's
concerned about this brings up at this point, so
what is the message we're going to send to the kids
if you legalize or say it's okay for medicine?  And
I have put in a couple of studies which study
states and neighboring states before and after it's
permitted as a medicine in those states that it has
been permitted, and in both of those studies, there
is no increase in the use among kids.  In fact,
there's generally a decrease.

I also tried to address your questions
more specifically, and I don't know how I'm doing
on time?  Have I got another minute or two?

DEBBIE JORGENSON:  Got seven more
minutes.

JOE McSHERRY:  Oh, excellent.  The

There are other aspects of abuse which
I'm sure you're interested in, and again, that's --
don't have to do everything.

The pharmacological effects are much
too long to talk about at this point.  They are in
some of the articles that I've given you, and if
you'd like, I'd certainly be delighted to send
more.

The current status of the scientific
knowledge, again, I would suggest that the board
really needs its own copy of the IOM report.  I
would be glad to have brought it, but the
government charges money for it even though we paid
for it when it was done, and it's a book.  It's got
five chapters, deals with patients, deals with
animal research, deals with social consequences,

In the history and current pattern of
abuse of marijuana, I suggest the Shafer report
because it was another government-funded report
which is wildly underread and dealt with the abuse
part, and it didn't agree with Dr. -- President
Nixon's view at the time, and it was discarded.
But it brings you up to date in 1972.  Abuse hasn't
changed that much.  Large number of people still
use it and such.

The risk to public health, again, I
don't think it affects kids.  I'm not sure what the
other risks would be.  The potential for it to
produce psychic or physiologic dependence, I did
snap out one table from the Institute of Medicine
report, and that's the table that's included there.
It goes -- shows tobacco is used by about
76 percent of the population; alcohol, 92 percent
and so on in the left column.

In the right column, of those who have
ever used these drugs, it shows what percentage
became dependent.  And again, with tobacco, about a
third of the people who use it become dependent;

So in terms of its risk of abuse, it's
lower than a lot of the drugs that you have to
schedule here.

I also put in an article on the
withdrawal syndromes.  I have lots -- there are
other articles that have been on the withdrawal
syndromes.  Essentially, it's about four days of
being more irritable.  It's the same as tobacco in
many regards.  Being more irritable, maybe trouble
with sleep.  In the case of marijuana, they also
lose some weight when they stop taking it.

On whether it's an immediate precursor
of a substance or other controlled substance
schedule, I was a little puzzled by that because
think of a precursor as something that's chemically
transformed into something else, and marijuana, of
course, is a plant, so I looked up your definition.
I included that.  Wasn't very helpful.

In your Schedule I, I pointed out what
you have there, which is anything that has to do
with THC is bad.  Schedule II, I was somewhat
puzzled in that it says "unless specifically

LLOYD JESSEN:  It is.

JOE McSHERRY:  Anyway, I would just in
terms of whether you have to get an act of Congress
or whatever to do this, the state legislature, I
wasn't sure.

And so I don't find any of the other
drugs -- and I will say on Schedule I there are
things I've never heard of and have no idea what
they are, but I don't think there are any
derivatives other than what you've listed in these
other schedules, and I'd be delighted to address
any questions.

LLOYD JESSEN:  Thank you. Thank you,
Dr. McSherry.  I do have a few questions.  The
Institute of Medicine study you refer to, is that
the one dated 1999?

JOE McSHERRY:  That is.

LLOYD JESSEN:  We've already received
a copy of that.

JOE McSHERRY:  Excellent, excellent.
It's good reading.  Gets you to sleep at night.

LLOYD JESSEN:  In your opinion, do you
think we have current scientific evidence that
supports the medical use of marijuana?

JOE McSHERRY:  Absolutely.

LLOYD JESSEN:  And in your opinion, do
you feel the benefits outweigh the risks?

JOE McSHERRY:  Yes.  But that's based
on the things that we've talked about here.

LLOYD JESSEN:  Correct.  Okay.  Thank
you very much, Dr. McSherry, for your time.

JOE McSHERRY:  Thank you.

LLOYD JESSEN:  We'll now proceed with
our first -- our second speaker, and she's identified, I think, with Speaker No. 1.

I'd also like to ask if anyone has a
cell phone, if they could please turn it to
vibrate, that would help with the noise level.
Thank you.

LINDA LEE O'NEEL:  Sorry about the
phone.  My name is Linda Lee O'Neel.  I'm from
Creston, Iowa.  My last name is spelled O'N-e-e-l

My abilities are not as profuse as the
doctor here.  What I want to do is show you the
literature that I have cited.  The most recent
document was from a May 15, 2009, Denver Post
article on an experiment that was done by a -­
let's see here.  Dr. Julie L. Ryan of the
University of Rochester tested more than 600 breast
cancer patients undergoing chemo treatments across
the country.  Some were given ginger root; others a
placebo.

The ginger root takers rated their
nausea severity 45 percent less.  The placebo, no
change.  And it should be noted the ginger was
given before the chemo treatments.

The patients receiving ginger
expressed less nausea for four days after
chemotherapy.  Doses of .5 gram and 1 gram were the
most effective, reducing nausea by 40 percent
compared with the patients taking the placebo.  One
gram of ginger is equivalent to about one teaspoon.

Now, the article stressed that the
ginger used was grated ginger root, not any ginger
ale or ginger-type flavored substances, and so it
would provide a nonmedicine alternative to medical

This was also -- there's evidence that
when other amounts in different types of ginger
like ginger ale and ginger cookies and stuff were
used that it was hard on the stomach, so just as
aspirin is hard on the stomach if you don't take it
in the right amounts, so can this drug too be.
It's ginger that you find in the grocery store,
that weird little ginger root.  You grate it.  You
make tea out of it, and you take the tea before you
take your chemotherapy.  And that is the latest
article that I have.

The earlier articles that I had, one
was the Lancet article that appeared in 1963 that
Parade magazine picked up on.  Parade used to be
the insert in the newspapers.  It's now replaced by
USA Today.  And it picked up on the idea of medical
marijuana, and we've been hashing medical marijuana
ever since.

There is one article in here that I
have.  I took my finger out of it, and it said that
the marijuana acted on the brain and the dopamine
aspects of the brain in the same way as other drugs
did and making it just as much addictive as any
other drug.

This here is -- "The release of
anandamide is followed by rapid uptake into the
plasma and hydrolysis by fatty-acid amidohydrolase.
The psychoactive cannabinoids increase the activity
of dopaminergic neurons in the ventral tegmental
area of the mesolimbic pathway.  Since these
dopaminergic circuits are known to play a pivotal
role in mediating the refining -- or reinforcing
effects of most drugs of abuse, the enhanced
dopaminergic drive elicited by the cannabinoids is
thought to underlie the reinforcing and abuse
properties of marijuana.  Thus, cannabinoids share
a final common neuronal action with other major
drugs of abuse such as morphine, ethanol, and
nicotine in producing facilitation of the
mesolimbic dopamine system."

This is in -- P-r-o-g is the
abbreviation, Neurobiological, 1999, July edition
on pages 315 to 348.  And it was Effective
Cannabinoids on the Brain.

I had prepared an organized response
to positive marijuana because I do not believe that
after having seen my friends get high and become.
less person than what they were.  I know that there
are times when the -- the brain is less affected by

One of the articles that I did have
here talked about the brain cells that were there
and getting ready to divide and how marijuana
inhibited this ability for them to divide, and it
also talked about the effect of THC on the
cancer-fighting cells of the body.  THC in any form
was known to stop the cancer-fighting cells'
ability to stick to the cancer cell to destroy it.
It would just slide right off.  I have the
documents here.

And I've been given my four-minute
notice.  So I will put in writing to submit to the
board if you would please give me the address that
I can write this in a coherent form.

LLOYD JESSEN:  Yes.  We'll provide you
with that.

LINDA LEE O'NEEL:  Thank you.

LLOYD JESSEN:  I have a question,
please.  Are you in favor of medical marijuana or
opposed to it?

LINDA LEE O'NEEL:  I think the facts
that I've brought forth would cause any normal
person to be opposed to it.

LLOYD JESSEN:  All right.  Thank you.

KATE GAINER:  Yeah.

LLOYD JESSEN:  Okay.

KATE GAINER:  My name is Kate Gainer,
vice president of professional affairs for the Iowa
Pharmacy Association.

Thank you for the opportunity to state
the position of the Iowa Pharmacy Association on
this subject of legalization of marijuana for
medical purposes.

The Iowa Pharmacy Association is the
professional state society representing nearly
1,000 pharmacists, 700 pharmacies, as well as
pharmacy technicians and pharmacy students.

The mission of IPA is to advance
patient safety and patient health for all Iowans
through pharmaceutical care.  IPA supports
evidence-based medicine.  Evidence-based medicine
as defined in the 2009 users guide to the medical
literature is the conscientious, explicit, and
judicious use of current best evidence in making
decisions about the care of individual patients.

Evidence-based clinical practice
requires integration of individual clinical
expertise and patient preferences with the best
available external clinical evidence from
systematic research and consideration of available
resources.

The Iowa Pharmacy Association will
support the science on the issue of marijuana
legalization for medical purposes.  IPA is hopeful
the Board of Pharmacy will hear comprehensive
testimony from experts on the science of medical
marijuana.

For any prescription medication used
in the treatment and prevention of sickness and
disease, IPA supports distribution under the
control of the Iowa Boards of Medicine and
Pharmacy.

For medication used in our state, IPA
supports prescribing by Iowa licensed prescribers
and dispensing along with medication management by
an Iowa licensed pharmacist.

The Iowa Pharmacy Association house of
delegates adopted policy in 1997 relating to the
issue of legalizing marijuana for medical purposes.
I'll read that policy.

IPA supports the experimental use of
marijuana for medical purposes subject to
distribution controls by the Iowa Board of
Pharmacy.  IPA endorses utilization of the Board of
Pharmacy as the governmental agency responsible for
ensuring adequate control measures concerning
experimental studies involving marijuana for
medical purposes.  IPA opposes legalization of
marijuana for recreational purposes.  Thank you.

LLOYD JESSEN:  Thank you, Kate.  Do we
have the person who's been identified as our
Speaker No. 3?  Yes.

ROBERT MANKE:  Morning, folks.  My
name is Robert Manke, M-a-n-k-e, and I'm a medical
marijuana user here in the state of Iowa.

Board of Pharmacy members -- Board of
Pharmacy members, I'm here because I need your
help.  I don't represent anybody professionally. I
represent myself.  I've been in three severe
traffic accidents.  You want to see what a miracle
looks like?  This is what a miracle looks like.
See me hold my arms up?  It's incredible.  I'm
amazed I'm not in a wheelchair.

I have a broken spine.  I have two
Harrington rods, six fused joints in my back.

I know what pain is like. That doctor
came up and talked about Fentanyl fizzies.  Yeah,
what I know they're like too.  I take morphine.  I
take Percocets.  I take -- God, what else?  I'm on
methadones right now.

I have severe nausea, folks.  I know
what it's like to crawl around On the bathroom
floor like an animal in the morning vomiting with
my head in the stool, and need your help.

I'm not here because I want to get
high.  I'm here because I want to stop being sick,
and I want to stop being persecuted, and I need
your help.  This isn't fun to get up here.  This is
scary.  I'm trembling right now.

Our laws need to be changed.  They
need to respect the truth.  We need your scientific
evaluation, but we also need you to hear people
like me very badly.  You need to hear that I'm an
Iowan, and I was born here in Iowa.  My wife was
born here Iowa.  All our kids are born here in
Iowa.  All our parents, mom and dad, parents born
here in Iowa.  My grandparents were in the first

In 19 -- excuse me -- in 2007 I was
arrested for growing three Mexican pot plants in my
closet.  I didn't do that because I want to be a
rebel.  I do that because I want to stop puking.

I find from my own personal experience
something you need to hear.  In the morning I can't
take a Compazine suppository.  Oh yeah, I'm on that
too.  I'm also on Phenergan.  I can't take
suppositories because I have a hypercholesterol
anemia condition, and my blood cholesterol is over
900. take the biggest dose of Tricor you can
cram in a human body, and it produces tremendous
constipation.  I can't get a suppository in there,
folks, just to be blunt.  We're talking medical
stuff here.

But what I can get in me on the for
real is marijuana.  I can smoke cannabis, and I'm
telling you, if I got good cannabis, strong
cannabis, and I smoke about two pokes of that, my
nausea is reduced by 50 percent in, like, five
seconds.

What do you want me to do? Take

I want to talk about my migraines for
just a moment.  My migraines just utterly crush me.
Break-through pain, I can write you a book on
break-through pain.  I can.  That's why I get the
physics.

And they do -- they do exactly like
that doctor, that first speaker, said.  They don't
kick in for about 20 minutes.  You know what
20 minutes of a really bad migraine is like? I
doubt it.  And I'm telling you right now, I'm a
very serious Christian, and it'S about hell on
earth.

You get so sick and have blinding
flashes and vomit and just -- just wallow on the
floor and wish you were dead.  And it only helps
the littlest tiny bit that I'm not at fault in
those traffic accidents, folks.  It only helps the
smallest amount.

I need something that works.  I need
some serious, serious consideration by this board
on cannabis.  I'm not looking to get high on dope.
If want to get high on dope, I do just exactly
like I tell Senator Grassley.  I just reach over

What the doctor told you about these
delays and, you know, for the onset of the
medication to kick in, marijuana, smoked marijuana,
has an -- has a delay of seconds.

I have never in my life -- I've been
smoking cannabis off and on since 1972.  First it
was recreational, but since these traffic
accidents, I promise you, it's very different.  I
have never seen pink elephants.  I do not
hallucinate ever.  I've never seen anybody else do
it either.

I have no sensations of a desire to
harm myself or anybody else.  In fact, I've seen
people who would smoke cannabis that were violent
out on the construction sites.  I'm a professional
construction worker, among other things.  And it
calmed down those violent urges in those people,
and they would go back to work.  And they'd be
straightened out a bunch.

This stuff is not what you have had it
misrepresented to you to be like.  It is not an

I can't read that, honey.  Okay.

DEBBIE JORGENSON:  You have five
minutes left.

ROBERT MANKE:  Okay.  I'll see if I
can -- I've got to take these off for just a
moment.  I want to affirm that stronger cannabis
lets me have fewer coughs and better control of my
nausea.  I affirm that there is no withdrawal from
cannabis ever.  For me it doesn't exist.  But try
and tell me that with morphine or Percocet or, God
help me, Fentanyl, which is many, many times as
addictive and powerful as morphine.  Smoked pot
helps me stay off of narcotics.

I want to talk about severe
constipation just a bit again.  These narcotic
drugs that I take cause severe constipation.  Pot
doesn't do that.  It enables me to take a lot fewer
narcotic drugs, but I can't take it because I'm
going to get arrested.

I'm not interested in hurting anybody.
I need some help.  Right now the FDA-approved drugs
that I take are chlorpromazine maleate, Compazine,

I want to talk about pain control for
severe migraine.  It works.  It's real.  I've sent
a lot of letters to Senator Grassley.  Talk about
frustrating effort.  That guy doesn't exactly like
people like me.

Who's going to represent me, pharmacy
members?  If it isn't you, who's going to represent
me?  Because I need your help.  I'm not up here to
get high.  I'm up here to help you understand that
there really are people like me out here.  We're
Iowans and marijuana helps us.  I don't even like
to call it marijuana.  It's cannabis.

I've done a lot of reading on the
pharmaceutical derivatives of this, the sesame oil
with the THC, and I personally -- personally
believe that they're probably right when they say,
like the doctor did, that what's in the plant is
far more complex, contains far more different kinds
of pharmaceutically active molecules than what
these stripped-down versions that are being sold to
the public provide.

There's a lot we don't understand yet.
I believe that.  But at the same time, cannabis has
been so studied over and ever and over.

want to present you with one
statistic too.  100 people a year die from potato
overdose because potatoes have sialic acid in them
and can kill you.

There are multiple offers of rewards
for thousands and thousands of dollars for one
authentic case of cannabis overdose death, and to
date they are unclaimed, and I don't think they
ever will be claimed.  How can they?  Cannabis
doesn't kill anybody.  It doesn't do it.  You
don't see pink elephants off of it.  It doesn't
kill anybody.

What do you want?  What does it take
to get something legal to help somebody like me?
I'm tired of being reduced by people like Senator
Grassley to being an anecdote.  I am an Iowan.  I
am not an anecdote.  Thank you for your time.

LLOYD JESSEN:  Thank you.  Thank you.

ROBERT MANKE:  Was there questions you
need?

LLOYD JESSEN:  Any questions from
board members?  No.  Thank you, though.