P R O C E E D I N G S

LLOYD JESSEN:  Welcome to the third
public hearing 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 is one board
member, Peggy Whitworth, who is a public member
from Cedar Rapids, and Peggy is sitting right over
there.  Also present today are board staff Debbie
Jorgenson, who's in the front row, and Becky Hall,
who is out in the hallway.

SueAnne Jones of Johnson Reporting
Services is serving as the certified reporter for
this hearing.

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 six 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

Any board recommendation for changes
to the controlled substance schedules 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 Schedule I to a different controlled substance
schedule.  No. 7, the potential of marijuana to
produce psychic or physiological dependence
liability.  No 8, whether marijuana is an
immediate precursor of a substance or some other
controlled substance schedule.  No. 9, whether
marijuana's potential for abuse or lack thereof is

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 this
microphone.  Speakers must speak slowly and clearly
so the 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 our record.  Testimony that
references an exhibit should identify the exhibit

Speakers are also reminded to avoid
repetitious or irrelevant comments.  Speakers
should be short and concise.  Unruly behavior will
not be tolerated.  Please hold your applause until
each speaker has finished making their comments.

In addition to receiving oral comments
at today's hearing, the board welcomes and
encourages people to submit 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
legislature.

This hearing will be in session until
7 p.m. tonight.  We will take about two 15-minute
breaks during the afternoon.  Our next and our
final public hearing on this topic will be held on
Wednesday, November 4 in Council Bluffs, Iowa, from
10 a.m. to 7 p.m.

We will now welcome our first speaker
who is Senator Joe Bolkcom from Iowa City.

SEN JOE BOLKCOM:  Good afternoon.
My name is Joe Bolkcom.  I'm a member of the Iowa
Senate.  I live here in Iowa City at 728 Second
Avenue.

And I'd like to start by thanking the
members of the Iowa Pharmacy Board for coming to
Iowa City today to take testimony from Iowans about
the medical efficacy of marijuana.  I would like to
thank the Board of Pharmacy for their leadership in
bringing this important issue and this sensitive
topic to the attention of Iowans.

I'd especially like to thank Board
member Whitworth who's here and the executive
director, Mr. Jessen, for their leadership on this
issue.

Over the course of the last couple of
months, the board has been conducting a series of
four public hearings around Iowa to seek input from
medical professionals, patients, and the public
about their views on this important issue.

I think the work of the board is
important for two reasons.  You are providing a
forum for Iowans to have their voices heard, and at
the same time you are educating Iowans about this
topic.  I share your view on the need to review and
evaluate the research evidence on the benefits and
risks of marijuana use as a medical treatment.  I
expect that we will learn much from your work.

This year I introduced Senate File 293,

Since introducing the bill, I have
received dozens of e-mails on this topic from
people across our state.  More than 95 percent of
those e-mails and correspondence have been
supportive of legalizing the use of marijuana for
certain diagnosed medical conditions.

I have frankly been impressed by the
intimate and personal medical stories I have heard
from people across our state who suffer daily with
chronic pain or chronic conditions that
substantially reduce their ability to live a normal
life free of pain.

This past March, a subcommittee
meeting on Senate File 293 was held at the state
capitol, and it attracted 35 people to discuss this
issue. There were several people that shared
personal stories about their trials and
tribulations with diseases like multiple sclerosis,
fibromyalgia, diabetic neuropathic gastroparalysis,
and their experiences with powerful prescription
drugs that do not address their pain and suffering.

I have heard from chronically ill
people who have been prescribed all the most
powerful narcotics available at any pharmacy with
little positive effect, drugs like morphine,
OxyContin, Percocet, codeine, drugs, by the way,
that have powerful side effects.

I have heard from those who would like
to use marijuana but are afraid of the legal
consequences, and I've heard from people who have
illegally obtained the use of marijuana for medical
purposes in spite of the law.

I've really gained a new appreciation
of the personal and extremely difficult health
conditions and stress under which many Iowans live
every day.

Your work is timely.  Thirteen states
have already moved to legalize the medicinal use of
marijuana.  This last year, fourteen -- fourteen
other states across our country, legislation, was
introduced to do the same.  Even last month, the
Older Iowa Legislature voted to support legislative
action legalizing marijuana for medical purposes.

As you have heard at your first two
hearings and as you will hear today, there's much
patient interest in your work.  I'm hopeful that

Thank you for being here again today,
and I look forward to learning more about this
topic from those that are here to provide
testimony.  Thank you.

LLOYD JESSEN:  Thank you, Senator.
Welcome.  Our next scheduled person to speak is
Kevin Litten.  Is Ron Herman here?  Okay.  Well, we
could take whoever would like to speak at this
point.

DEBBIE JORGENSON:  Do we have a
Speaker No. 1?

LLOYD JESSEN:  Anyone here identified
as Speaker No. 1?

JOHN STAMLER:  Yes.  Do you want me to
go up there?

LLOYD JESSEN:  Yes, please.

JOHN STAMLER:  Thank you.  I'm Speaker
No. 1.  Also John Stamler.

LLOYD JESSEN:  Can you please state

JOHN STAMLER:  Yeah.  My name is John
Stamler.  I am an ophthalmologist, M.D., and a
Ph.D., and I do clinical research in ophthalmology.

I know you're going to hear a lot
about other uses for medical marijuana, but I just
wanted to put in a few words about the uses --
potential uses of these substances for treatment of
eye diseases, particularly glaucoma.

Glaucoma is -- remains a leading cause
of blindness in the United States.  There are
millions of people who are affected with this
disease who still go blind even though we have
numerous treatments, but none of them are perfect.
There are still people who cannot tolerate side
effects or are -- or the drugs are not effective.

And we -- glaucoma is a disease caused
mostly by a high pressure in the eye.  And we do
know that THC and related compounds do lower
pressure in the eye and both with topical and
systemic use.

So these -- these drugs have a lot of
potential.  However, they're not being researched
very much, and that's primarily because --
primarily because people don't see that they'll

So without being licensable for use in
patients, these potentially very useful drugs will
never be investigated and never be studied, and we
won't find out if -- if they'll be useful or not.

I know as a researcher myself, I don't
want to spend a lot of time in my career
researching something that will never have a
potential of being used. So that's my first point.

My second point is I think that you
can trust physicians to prescribe medicines in an
appropriate way.  I think if -- if there are safe
and effective treatments found using medical
marijuana that -- that physicians can be entrusted
to prescribe them reasonably and -- and rationally
just as we're entrusted with opiates and
benzodiazepines and amphetamines and other very --
drugs that have a lot of abuse potential.

So I'd like you to consider this when
you're deliberating.  Thanks.

LLOYD JESSEN:  Thank you.  Is Kevin
Litten here yet?  No.  All right.  Let's get
Speaker No. 2.

CARL OLSEN:  My name is Carl Olsen,
and I live at 130 East Aurora Avenue in Des Moines.

Patients Out of Time was going to
present this to you, and they were going to do a
summary of what it means, and they haven't done
that yet, and they will be doing that, but I want
to get this in the record right now and get it in
early so -- That's all I have to say.

LLOYD JESSEN:  Thank you.  Speaker
No. 3.

DEBBIE JORGENSON:  I don't have one
yet.

LLOYD JESSEN:  Don't have a No. 3 yet?
Okay.

DEBBIE JORGENSON:  I don't think so.

LLOYD JESSEN:  Is Kevin Litten here?
No.  Well, then it's 12:30, and we have another
person scheduled at 12:50.

DEBBIE JORGENSON:  But if they're
here, they can go ahead and go.

LLOYD JESSEN:  Yeah.  That would be

SCOTT GALENBECK:  Back here.

LLOYD JESSEN:  Okay.  We have a person
out front who would give you a number.

DEBBIE JORGENSON:  I'll go get it.

LLOYD JESSEN:  Oh, okay.  All right.

DEBBIE JORGENSON:  Whenever you want
to, you go ahead and start.

LARRY QUIGLEY:  Okay.

DEBBIE JORGENSON:  Excuse me.  I have
a favor to ask.  So the court reporter can hear him
well, if everyone could just keep their side
discussions down for right now, then --

LARRY QUIGLEY:  Okay.  Is that good?

DEBBIE JORGENSON:  Yes.

LARRY QUIGLEY:  I've never been to one
of these hearings before, and I don't really know a
lot of what the issue is about.

DEBBIE JORGENSON:  Could you --
Escuse me.  I'm sorry.  Could you state your name
first?  Could you state your first name, please?

LARRY QUIGLEY:  My name is Larry

So I'm pro marijuana for treatment,
medical treatment.  I would say seven months ago I
wouldn't have been, but I have used various kinds
of medications to treat lower back pan spasms,
muscle tightness, tonic -- catatonic spasms, and on
my birthday in April, I was with some people who
had marijuana, and I tried it, and not that I
hadn't tried it many, many years ago, but I'd never
tried it for a specific treatment.

And what brought me to that was I went
online and started seeing what other people in
other states were doing.  Apparently doctors in
Iowa can't recommend it.  They can talk about it,
but marijuana has been pretty effective in
treatment of -- with spinal cord injury, which is
what I have, for certain kinds of spasms and pain.
So I tried it.

The next day I had an appointment with
my physiatrist.  I went in and showed him that I
was able to move my legs around without having that
tightness, that spasms, and he said "I can't
recommend it."  And he said he couldn't recommend
Marinol, which is a derivative of marijuana,

He's familiar with my history, the
kinds of medications I've tried to use, why I can't
use oral Baclofen, diazepam, or Valium.  It affects
my cognitive processes.  I don't like that.

For some reason marijuana did not seem
to bother me.  The side effects of it did not seem
to bother me.  You know, I was concerned about
paranoia, which of course there's paranoia as long
as it's illegal.  You're going to be paranoid
because you can go to prison for using it, so you
know, there's a cultural aspect to using it.

Well, I tried it.  I showed him, and
he just looked dumbfounded, didn't know what to
say.  And at that same time I was getting treatment
from a physical therapist, and I went in, and I
didn't tell him about it, and he said "Wow, your
legs are really much looser today.  I can really
get a much greater stretch on them."

And then I told him that I'd been
using marijuana.  And -- and so then I would go --
when I would go in for treatment, depending on

And I asked him, and I asked the
physiatrist, to put this in their notes.  Whether
or not they did that, whether or not they want to
do that, whether they would subject me to some
legal ramification, I don't know.  But what I do
know is that it works for me.

I'm not using it right now.  I can
show you what my legs -- how stiff they are.  Won't
prove anything, but if you give me some marijuana
and I take it right now, I could show you the
difference.  Okay?  But no one is going to do that.

And I'm sure that a lot of people here
are going to be skeptical.  You're not going to
believe what I'm saying, but it's time that -- that
Iowa really looked at this seriously.

I've thought about going to other
states.  I would have to leave my 11-year-old son
here.  I'm not willing to do that.  I'm not willing
to use it illegally.  So I'm going to suffer.  The
way I can manage it now is I can spend a long
period of time in a horizontal position.  That will

I have trouble rolling because my
spasms tighten up, and I've been 28 years in a
wheelchair, 28 years with a spinal cord injury,
incomplete break, and up until 2001 or about 2001,
I could manage it by myself, no problem.

But now I'm having secondary
conditions from -- from long-term effects of
spinal cord injury.  So this is the treatment that works
for me.  It doesn't affect me mentally.  Side
effects are not a problem for me.

Other side effects -- side effects of
other drugs are.  You know, morphine puts me to
sleep.  You know, so I think that we really need to
look at this seriously, and we need to open our
eyes to what we're saying when we say we won't
legalize it.  We're saying we want people to go out
on the street and look for it themselves and treat
their own condition and be associated with people
who are going to also sell other illicit drugs,
heroin, methamphetamine.  I mean this is a
money-making deal for drug dealers.  Okay?
Marijuana is a gateway for them to more money.

So I don't know what else to say.  Ask

LLOYD JESSEN:  Thank you very much.
Our next speaker will be Lisa Jackson.

LISA JACKSON:  Hello. My name is Lisa
Jackson.  I live in Crawfordsville, Iowa.  I've had
fibromyalgia for seven years. For someone who
doesn't know, fibromyalgia is a neurological
disorder with multiple chemical imbalances which in
part leaves us not being able to treat it with
opiates.  We don't have any real injuries.

Some of the other issues that add to
the fibromyalgia are restless leg syndrome,
irritable bowel syndrome, sensitivity to light,
sound, touch.  There are so many and -- I'm sorry,
I'm nervous.  There are so many different things
that we are affected by, and because of the way the
chemicals react to things for us, marijuana is my
only option.

In the first year of my new life with
fibromyalgia, I lost my job.  I had severe
depression.  I had unbearable pain in my feet and
legs to the point I couldn't walk, and if I was, I
was crying.  In the mornings that pain wakes me,
still to this day.  I don't need an alarm clock.
Sleeping in because I'm tired is not an option

Laying on my stomach for more than
three minutes at a time, it's hard for you guys to
understand but will paralyze me for fifteen to
twenty minutes, and I thank God I have a wonderful
husband because I can't imagine what I would do
without him, the times I've -- he's had to roll me
over because I could not move.

My second year I lost my job, and the
fatigue and pain took everything, my income, my
pride, my respect, ability to function, ability to
bathe.  I couldn't walk 14 steps upstairs to go to
my own bathroom without muscles in my legs burning
like I'd ran two miles.

Not counting I felt that way inside.
I was exhausted.  It got bad enough where I
couldn't get out of bed.  For four years I laid in
bed.  Four years is a long time to be stuck in bed,
not being able to take care of small children.

My little girl learned to cook for
herself at seven because she didn't have a choice.
She cooks for me.  About two years ago after I'd
tried everything -- I'd overdosed on just about
every opiate.  I overdosed for two weeks straight
with not knowing it.  What people don't understand

Well, it was working, but it's not
going to take my pain away.  And since it wasn't
working well enough to take my pain away, I quit
taking it.  And two years ago I figured my only
option was suicide.

And after thinking about it for a
couple weeks, I went to my husband, and I talked to
him, and I have been smoking marijuana ever since.
And I don't regret it.  My family is open-minded
about it.  My children know about it.  And I don't
do anything wrong.  Nothing wrong.

The medications that I have to take on
a daily basis are more lethal to me and my family
than marijuana.  You can't OD on it.  You can't get
addicted to it, not physically.  And the amount of
thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars I
gave for the opiates that have done no -- I don't
know what damage they've done.  I really don't
know.  I'll find out later, I guess, down the road
because a few of these, I still have no option to
take.  I have to take them.

Fibromyalgia sufferers do have the

The centers would also give patients
support that they would not get elsewhere in the
community.  Marijuana will always be available,
always.  And whether we choose to go out and into,
like Larry said, these undesirable situations that
we don't want to be put into.  I don't want to be
associated with cocaine and meth or whatever.  I
just want some pain relief.  I want some relief.  I
want to live.  I want to be allowed to live.

I want to be allowed to be a mother.
I want to be allowed to be a wife, and I want to be
allowed to be a good person.  And smoking marijuana
allows me to do that.  Is it worth going to jail?
For me it is.  I can either go back to bed or I can
smoke marijuana, and I'm not going back to bed.  I
I don't have any other options.

I'm a good mom.  I'm a good wife.  I
have a great relationship with my children, and I
should not be prosecuted for that.

Man has not given me any medication.
If you had, I've taken it.  I even took methadone.
I'm allergic. I took it for two weeks even though
I was allergic, hoping for the relief.

Until you've laid in bed and has so
much pain running through your body as if it were
running through your bloodstream, you have no idea,
and I can't imagine, Larry, what you go through.
Your pain is different.  It's all different.

But until you've been paralyzed and
lost your life, you have no idea.  And I will
continue to smoke it, and I don't have a problem
with it.  And the 12 categories that the board is
looking for has been proven for years.  Thank you.

LLOYD JESSEN:  Thank you, Lisa.  Ron
Herman.  Is Ron Herman here?

RON HERMAN:  Yes.

LLOYD JESSEN:  Okay.

RON HERMAN:  I'm the director of the
Iowa Drug Information Network here at the
University of Iowa College of Pharmacy, and one of
the things that one of my colleagues asked me to do
was to look into the evidence as it relates to
medical marijuana and its use, and so myself and
graduates -- senior pharmacy students, myself, as a

We identified 91 studies that have
been done that have looked at it in various
situations.  It's all summarized.  I don't have
time to go through 91 studies.  I don't intend to
do that.

What I want to do is point out is that
we have identified in the tables for you tables
that the first table deals with -- with marijuana
in the context as an antiemetic.  Table 2 looks at
it in the context of using it as an appetite
stimulant; Table 3 for analgesia.  Table 4 goes on
to look at it in the context of multiple sclerosis.
Table 5 looks at it in the context of epilepsy;
Table 6 as it relates to glaucoma; Table 7 as it
relates to Parkinson's disease; and table 8 as --
to Tourette's Syndrome.

Each of those tables are subdivided
into the various types of ways in which the
cannabis product can be administered.  It can be
smoked as -- as marijuana. It can be taken as --
as an extract, as THC or cannabis extract.  There
are various derivatives, cannabinol, cannabidiol,

And so you have the opportunity to go
through, and I have identified those studies. The
key features of each of those studies, all that has
been included in those 91 studies are studies that
are either randomized controlled trials or
observational studies.  We did not bother to
include any of the case reports.  There literally
would be thousands of case reports.  We didn't use
any of the descriptive reports.  We just identified
studies that provide evidence one way or the other.

The very last column on the right in
the table are some comments either made by -- by
the authors of each study, summarizing some of the
key points that they took away from that study, and
occasionally it is our commentary associated with
it.

Bottom line, there is evidence for
benefit in many of these uses.  Quite often from
smoking marijuana there is very little benefit in
relationship to the potential adverse events.  When
you look at the various extracts and certainly when
you develop the synthetic products, they're able to

A preponderance of the studies
compared the particular form of marijuana to
placebo, to either a placebo cigarette or a placebo
other dosage form, and in a number of cases, it is
better than placebo, but most of the studies didn't
go the next step, which is what most medical people
want to know is, how does it compare with other
accepted treatments?

And so there are a lot of studies
where they have done a comparison between either
the marijuana itself or the other agent itself.
You'll see more of those in the antiemetic group.
There's about 30 studies within that group.  You'll
see more of the comparisons between the different
drugs and that, so you will see some of the
comparisons there, but you won't see that for a lot
of them.

Some cases, there is evidence that
suggests that it may be beneficial.  Sometimes it
shows that it's not beneficial.  There's not a
hard-and-fast rule that you can say across the
board.  You have to look at each particular

In the first two pages there, we just
gave a little bit of the history of marijuana and
its use.  It's been around since the year 4000 is
the first documented use in China.  In 2700 BC,
they were using it a lot.  Used a lot here in the
U.S. until it was banned in the 1800s, and then
there has been a resurgence since then.

Bottom line, you look at glaucoma, it
will reduce intraocular pressure but at the expense
of raising blood pressure, probably to the
detriment of the individual. So you can't say yes,
it works.  Well, it works, but you have to look at
it in the context of which it's working and the
potential consequences, the adverse effects that
are associated with it.

So that's -- that's my contribution to
the board. You -- as you make a decision, you'll
need to weigh the evidence, and hopefully this will
help you, this evidence table that I've provided
you will help you to make some -- some decisions
based on that.

LLOYD JESSEN:  Thank you, Dr. Herman.
I think we might have a few questions for you.
First of all, I want to thank you for putting this

Can you also tell us what your
educational background is?  I know you've got a
Ph.D., but can you tell us what your degrees are?

RON HERMAN:  Bachelor of science in
pharmacy here in '76, master's in hospital clinical
pharmacy, and then a Ph.D. in pharmacokinetics from
here so --

LLOYD JESSEN:  Great.  Thank you.  Do
you have an opinion as to what the best route of
administration is for patients who use medicinal
cannabis?

RON HERMAN:  Well, the vast majority,
as I went through and looked at the studies, when
it's inhaled, whether it's -- it's through the
products that are actually put into inhalers or
whether it's smoked, there tends to be more adverse
effects, especially if it's not a purified product.

The little handout there states there
are 60 -- there are 400 known chemicals isolated in
the cannabis plant, and 60 of those are grouped
under the cannabinoids.  So you know, there are a
lot of different alkaloids in there.  Some of them
are producing your beneficial effects, some of them

So if you're using one of those
products that's the THC/CBD combination for
inhalation, again, you're running the chance of
having more adverse effects when you're using that.
The purified Nabilone product, the one that is
produced by the FDA and on the market, that one
tends to have fewer side effects, at least of the
psychotropic variety of side effects.

LLOYD JESSEN:  Another question I've
got is if Iowa were to approve cannabis for medical
purposes, do you see a role for pharmacies and
pharmacists in the dispensing of it?

RON HERMAN:  I would -- I would say
just with any other -- as any other medicine is
distributed, I would see it appropriate that
whatever schedule it's placed in and be processed
in that way just as the pharmacy would process
anything.

I don't know that there needs to be a
special new category created, but I think there's
appropriate -- now, there are a number of countries
that do have a second tier of drugs that -- that
are dispensed only by pharmacists, but I don't
think that this is something that would necessarily

LLOYD JESSEN:  Oh, we have our
assistant attorney general with us today, Scott
Galenbeck, and he's got a question.

RON HERMAN:  I do have a couple extra.
Do you need more?  Wasn't sure how many.

BOARD MEMBER WHITWORTH:  Appreciate
it.  Thank you.

SCOTT GALENBECK:  If I understand your
testimony, there is more than one kind of marijuana
that we're talking about or marijuana products, so
would there -- if there were medical marijuana
available, would it have to be five different
products useful in five -- for five different
disease states, or what's your response to that?

RON HERMAN:  Well, I would think that
over the course of time at least that the best way
to approach that is to identify the specific
substance that targets the effect that you want.

If you want to relieve -- you want
analgesic relief, then there's certain receptors
you want to target, so you're going to try and
focus and give the drug that's most specific that
binds the most to that target receptor and -- and
has less of the other substances that will abind to

So again, I would think ideally you
would want to continue to pursue the research and
identify out of those -- those 60 different
cannabinoids, which are the ones that are
responsible for relieving -- you know, providing
analgesia.  Which ones are responsible for stopping
the emesis, the vomiting that you see so often in
cancer, chemotherapy.  And this can be quite
effective for that, and some of the derivatives
that they're developing are focusing specifically
on that.

So ideally, I would see that as -- as
the way to go.  Yeah.  I have some biases, but I
don't want to introduce those.  I want to try to
stay on the facts.  Yes.

CARL OLSEN:  Do you see a cost
involved in developing those drugs in a time span
and a sponsor or somebody to push it through to get
those things created and approved and on the
market, and what would they end up costing when
they actually do make the market?

And the reason I'm asking that is
because people that grow marijuana have very little

RON HERMAN:  Yeah.  You know, there
definitely will be costs associated with all that.
You know, a lot of that's going on.  If you go
through those 91 studies, and in that table I
listed where all of those studies were done, and
over 50 percent of those 91 studies were done
outside the United States.  So Germany, Brazil,
Great Britain, a lot of places are looking at this.

A lot of companies have these
chemicals in process and developed, you know, in
the development stages, so some of them are not
very far away, I'm guessing.

CARL OLSEN:  Is that research going on
outside the United States because the United States
makes it too difficult to do that research?

RON HERMAN:  Probably not, although it
might be a factor.  There's a lot of research -- a
lot of our drugs that make it on the market
sometimes hit the market in Europe before they do
here, just because of the process, and there's --
there's -- there are definite reasons that the U.S.
has procedures, you know, safeguards in the drug

There have been a number of agents
that have been fast-tracked and have resulted in
very dangerous situations to people in recent
years, and so you know, the U.S. takes a very
strict control of that process trying to avoid
potential dangerous products making it on the
market.

CARL OLSEN:  Do you think people that
jump the gun and use the plant should be put in
prison?

RON HERMAN:  That's something I'm --
I'm not going to even get into that moral issue.

CARL OLSEN:  That's okay.  That's
okay.  Just a rhetorical question.

JEFF ELGIN:  What is the LD50 factor
for cannabis?

RON HERMAN:  I cannot tell you that
off the top of my head.  I would have to look that
up.  I'm sure it's -- it's --

JEFF ELGIN:  It's off the chart --

RON HERMAN:  -- published.

JEFF ELGIN:  -- to save you some time
in the direction of safety.

RON HERMAN:  Yeah.  As far as

JEFF ELGIN:  The body.

RON HERMAN:  -- the person, the
individual or the animal?

JEFF ELGIN:  Right, exactly.

RON HERMAN:  In some cases the animal
is where that's determined.

JEFF ELGIN:  Thank you.

SCOTT GALENBECK:  Dr. Herman, I have
one more question that I didn't get to ask you
before.

RON HERMAN:  Uh-huh.

SCOTT GALENBECK:  Now, one of the
things I'm -- I think I'm going to take away from
your comments today is that somebody who -- for
example, we had a speaker earlier who was using
marijuana for her fibromyalgia.

What you're -- is it fair to say that
your testimony is that she may be achieving some
success in treating her disease state with the
marijuana that she is using, but there may be a
consequence to that she doesn't understand or
isn't being measured?

RON HERMAN:  Yeah, exactly.

SCOTT GALENBECK:  So there may be

RON HERMAN:  Yeah, and -- and again,
if you're smoking it and it's in a public place,
other people are being exposed to -- to that as
well, at least -- at least the tars and the
nicotines that are being produced.  And so yeah.
There are definitely other consequences that --
with it.

But if you go through that analgesia
table, there are some of them that shows that it is
quite effective in certain types of analgesia when
it's compared to placebo.  When they compare it to
some of the other analgesic agents, sometimes it's
no better than codeine.  And some of the side
effects are a little bit, you know, higher relative
to codeine.

But you know, again, it's -- every
study is a little bit different and looks at it
slightly different, but you know, the board will
just have to carefully weigh all that evidence.
They'll have to look at all those studies.

SCOTT GALENBECK:  And then one last
question.  Dr. Stamler suggested that additional
research was needed, and the other thing I would --

RON HERMAN:  Yeah, cannabinoids.

SCOTT GALENBECK:  -- to treat certain
disease states.

RON HERMAN:  Yeah.

SCOTT GALENBECK:  Without negative --

RON HERMAN:  Without having all of the
adverse consequences that you get from -- from
using the, you know, product with all
60 cannabinoids and the other steroids and sterols.
There are other steroids in -- in the cannabis
plant as well, and you are being exposed to those
in addition to --

SCOTT GALENBECK:  Thank you very much.

RON HERMAN:  Yes.

LARRY QUIGLEY:  You talked about
trying to synthesize different drugs from
marijuana.

RON HERMAN:  Uh-huh.

LARRY QUIGLEY:  The stuff that I've
been reading, I know you don't like testimony
because you believe they're not facts, but I'd like