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.