I'm wondering if you can consider
variables such as the modulating effects of
chemicals of marijuana for treatment of certain
kinds of conditions, and also, why is it you're not
looking at people who have had successful treatment
and looking at what that's doing to their body
individually as opposed to saying generally "This
is what it will do for analgesic" or whatever?

To me that doesn't make sense because
we're all individuals.  My spinal cord injury is
not like anyone else's, and believe me, I've tried
everything out there to try to maintain -- to give
myself relief from these problems, and I would not
advocate marijuana -- you know, like I said, eight
months ago, I wouldn't have done it.  But right now
I'm saying it works.

And if it works, why synthesize the
drug?  Why subject yourselves to this idea that the
pharmacy has to be involved?  I don't have much
faith in pharmaceuticals.  They haven't done that
much for me.

And I agree.  Smoking, secondhand
smoke is a problem.  So let's take it off the
table.  Let's say -- let's use another method.  You
can't use it in public.  Okay?  Let's -- let's
eliminate that.  Let's not even talk about that
because what you're doing is you're creating a red
herring.  We don't need it.  Okay?

What we need is for this to be
rescheduled and then let the research flow after
that.  Let's look at what it actually is doing to
people and how -- how quality of life can be better
for these people.

I mean come on.  Look at the number of
people who are in here who are advocating for it.
You think this is all a hoax?

LLOYD JESSEN:  Thank you.  I need to
interrupt here.  Dr. Herman -- no.  Can you hold
your applause a moment, please?  Dr. Herman is a
very knowledgeable presenter, and we could spend
the entire day having a dialogue with him, but we
can't do that.  We're here today to hear from a lot
of people, and we had not addressed whether we
would allow questions from the audience, and I
don't see how we can.

I need to stop at this point and ask

MADAM REPORTER:  I just need the LD50
gentleman's name.

CARL OLSEN:  Jeff Elgin.

MADAM REPORTER:  Thank you.

LLOYD JESSEN:  Thank you.  We need to
stay our schedule, and if we allow endless
questions from the audience, we will not be able to
stay on our schedule today, so thank you,
Dr. Herman, very much.

LARRY QUIGLEY:  Why didn't you let him
answer my question?

DEBBIE JORGENSON:  Speaker No. 4.

LLOYD JESSEN:  Because you've had your
opportunity to speak, and we're going to proceed.

LARRY QUIGLEY:  But I don't have a
microphone, and you do, so you're more important.

LLOYD JESSEN:  We are ready for Kevin
Litten if he is here.  All right.  Then we're ready
for Speaker No. 4, please.

DEBBIE JORGENSON:  Would you please
state your name, at least the first name.

MARNI STEADHAM:  Marni Steadham.

Thirteen states have medical marijuana
on the books, and now it's our chance to kind of
lead the nation in getting that done.  What we
don't want are obstructive laws and lack of
research.

Sick are being denied care or jail
threats due to their medication.  We should not be
denying care because we feel that it will lead to
recreational use or lead to children using drugs.

We're not advocating recreational drug
use, I just want to state.  What we do want is
medicine instead of prisons, patients to be able to
have open and honest discussions with their doctors
without playing into politics and without having
someone between them and whatever their doctor
thinks is necessary for them for today.

The people that think that each case is
different and want compassion for people, and we
want people to know that patients are people, not
just statistics or drug users, and we have this
stigma that's attached to that and -- which is why

LLOYD JESSEN:  Thank you.  Speaker
No. 5.

RAY LAKERS:  Hello, everybody.  My
name is Ray Lakers.  I'm with Iowans for Medical
Marijuana.  I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis
in 2004.

What I came up here to Iowa City to
talk about today was a lot that's been in the news
lately, something that's called public option.
Okay?  All the debate about health care, we cannot
have a serious health-care discussion without
medical marijuana being part of the alternative to
lower health-care costs and to benefit the
thousands of Iowans already making this choice.

Many more who have a condition that
would benefit from medical cannabis are being
denied the choice due to social stigmas and
draconian laws placed on cannabis cultivation,
possession, and usage that may result in job loss,
residency, driver's license loss, incarceration for
any length of time.

From where I stand, right in front of
you all, I've already taken my own public option.
Use of my medicine costs no taxpayer any money, no

To fight for all of my brothers and
sisters in Iowa who have supported me in the fight
to one day make medical marijuana a reality for all
one day in Iowa and to end the suffering and
incarceration of nonviolent offenders, so one day
access won't involve a cancer patient or a man in a
wheelchair or a woman with a cane being subjected
to a back alley deal or many scenarios that can
happen when dealing in a marijuana transaction, be
it arrest or bad medicine or no medicine.

So we call this the Iowa Board of
Pharmacy medical marijuana hearings or Medical
Marijuana is Great, and the Midwest has Iowa.  I
say that because in all of the 13 states that have
working medical marijuana programs, their state
Board of Pharmacy had no involvement.  Why?
Because this is a health issue.  And going to a
county jail to breathe bad air, eat bad food is not
healthy for anyone.

To jail someone with a chronic
condition that also decided to take the same public
option that I did and then subject them to arrest

In this journey over the last five
years, I have met many remarkable people like
government IND medical marijuana patient and Iowa
resident George McMahon who suffers from
Nail-patella Syndrome, a painful bone cancer in his
hands.

It is my understanding the Board of
Pharmacy is claiming that his condition was never
presented to you in the original lawsuit that
triggered this parade of brave men and women in
wheelchairs, canes, and sign language interpreters.

I'm sure the Board of Pharmacy knows
how to use the internet.  On, word for word, page 8
of the response to the court order for the board's
appearance Friday, October 9, on page 8, the order
states "The testimony of George McMahon, who did
not identify himself or his ailment to the board,
on July 29, 2008, his testimony was credible based
on his testimony that the federal government -- he
is in a program that supplies medical marijuana to
Mr. McMahon and another individual in Iowa.
Marijuana has been useful to McMahon in the
treatment of his unspecified medical condition."

One would like to think the Iowa Board
of Pharmacy Examiners would have done their
homework on the man who has testified over and
over, year upon year for every man's right to have
his choice.

Did you not take notice when George
legally smoked a joint right in the parking lot of
the Board of Pharmacy meeting last July?  Didn't
you wonder what gave him that right?  I've been
taking notice ever since I educated myself four
years ago that not one but two Iowans are getting
marijuana from our government, and they are still
alive and well in this program.

Now we are here, and I'm here bringing
tear after tear all of us now living in fear
because the state board involved in deadly,
poisonous, deadly, addictive medicines have zero
education or knowledge about medical marijuana and
the advancements in research not funded by the
United States Government.

Ask me to be -- respond to what the
National Multiple Sclerosis Society in the United
States has to say about medical marijuana.  My
answer will be the position is that the MS Society
of Great Britain, France, Spain, and Canada have

Many patients prefer different
delivery methods that do not involve a joint or a
bong.  There is also cooking and processing it in
your food and using such things as a vaporizer
where there is no smoke, and it removes any
argument about smoked medicine.

The new evidence that marijuana is
safe and effective, the International Association
for Cannabis as Medicine has just concluded at a
fifth conference on Cannabinoids in Medicine in
Cologne, Germany.  The conferences included
significant new evidence that marijuana is safe,
effective medicine for certain conditions, some of
which can be found in the conference abstracts.

I'm just wondering if the Iowa Board
of Pharmacy had any representation at that
cannabinoids conference so they could educate
themselves.  That would have been a very good
service for the State of Iowa, and we could have
used some of that money to do that.

Now, much like -- a much awaited study
came from the University of California San
Francisco where Donald Abrams, a college professor,
testified to the effects of adding marijuana to the
therapeutic regimen of chronic pain patients on a
long-term morphine or oxycodone therapy.  Because
the research were crunching numbers right up until
the conference, the abstract didn't include a lot
of details, but the study shows that marijuana did
indeed add significant pain relief on top of the
already provided narcotic painkillers.

The scientists concluded "Cannabinoids
may augment the analgesic effects of opioids,
allowing longer treatment at lower doses with fewer
side effects."  That's everything that a medical
marijuana patient or a person with a chronic
condition is looking forward to, fewer side effects
and not a bottle full of side effects on it.

So why would taking a highly addictive
poisonous FDA drug be better for me than a plant?
Reminds me of when the government ran a study to
try and prove marijuana as deadly.  It took 50 tons
of marijuana to kill 50 lab monkeys.  The monkeys
weren't forced to smoke the marijuana.  They had it
dropped on them.  It killed every one of them.

Denying individual's medical marijuana
must end.  An endorsement of the board against
medical marijuana is the same as dropping a one ton
bale of marijuana right on top of me as I stand or
one of my brothers and sisters in a wheelchair.
Thank you.  If you drop one on me, I may be in one.

LLOYD JESSEN:  Kevin Litten.

KEVIN LITTEN:  Hello.  My name is
Kevin Litten.  I'm a registered pharmacist in the
State of Iowa.  My number is 17715.  I'm here to
talk about how unfortunate it is that neither of
the colleges of pharmacy in the state teach their
students about the history and philosophy of
pharmacy as some other schools do.  I think that it
would be a valuable part of their curriculum and a
useful thing to know as they proceed in their
careers.

If you go back to the early days of
pharmacy and the basic philosophy of it, it leads
to discuss guys like Paris Helton (phonetical), and
some of those old renaissance and medieval
scientists talked about, especially God gave us
everything.  It's all here on earth.  All of our
problems we have can be answered with what we have
and what we know.

And to make certain plants illegal is
an affront to God, and yet some states have as many
as 49 illegal plants.  We're talking about plants
like marijuana, like salvia, the opium poppy,
psilocybe, keule, kava, and cawe.  All of these
plants have side effects which may not be good, and
they have effects which may not be good, and some
of them are probably outright poisonous, but they
have other chemicals that may be lifesaving, that
are possible to treat certain diseases, to help
people who need them.

Unless we make these things legal, we
cannot investigate them properly and fully, and
we're unable to use them to treat our patients with
the diseases that they have.

By making anything illegal, you do not
lessen its availability, only who you buy it from
and how much you pay.  You essentially lose control
over it.

If you look at the prohibition story
in the Bible in Genesis, you will see what happened
when Adam and Eve came across a tree that they
should not have -- have used.  God did not form up
a DEA.  He did not send thugs after them.  He did
make them responsible for their actions, but we

Furthermore, by making these plants
illegal, the money that is gained from it goes to
support the enemies of America.  It supports
terrorism, and it supports crime, so all of these
things should be made legal and controlled.  They
should not be illegal.

Also, by making them legal, you could
have standards, and you could have research on
delivery system and of course, you know, the other
chemicals which may be in those plants that we know
nothing about now.  We've been doing research for
years on anastomose and sponges and things grown at
the bottom of the sea, yet these plants are right
here in front of us.

We should be able to look at them and
decide how best to use them to help mankind.  And I
thank you for your time.

LLOYD JESSEN:  Thank you, Kevin.
Speaker No. 6, please.

JIMMY MORRISON:  My name is Jimmy
Morrison, and I'd like to thank -- start by
thanking all of you for coming, especially the
board.  I really appreciate you guys doing this

I have bipolar disorder, and right
here I have a study saying -- that says marijuana
works for bipolar disorder.  Some people may think
we should just allow medical marijuana for patients
who are terminally ill and who are dying, and I'd
just like to say that without medical marijuana, I
probably would not be here today due to my bipolar
disorder.

What you do when you say that
marijuana doesn't have medical benefit is you say
that it's illegal.  You make me a criminal.  I'm
not a criminal.  I don't break other laws.  I don't
do cocaine, heroin, any drugs. I don't even really
drink.  But last year I was detained eight times.

Bipolar disorder brings anxiety, and
police encounters are obviously not something that
helps that.  I've never been arrested even though I
was detained eight times.  But I would like to
share one story with you.

I was with my brother who did not know
that I had marijuana on me.  He does know I use it
for medical benefits, but we were in an altercation
with an officer, and I was detained on my knees
with a drug dog looking in my face, and I was

Not only do I have to be a criminal in
the police's eyes, I can't go to a store to obtain
my medical marijuana.  Earlier you talked about the
different strands of marijuana, and it basically
all falls into indica and sativa, but you can't
really determine what that is usually from just
getting it on the street.  And you also have to
deal with the real criminals who are on the street.

And I have another story.  I was
trying to obtain medical marijuana in a city that I
didn't know anybody in, so I went downtown, met a
couple guys, and they took me in a back alley.  One
of them held me down and threatened to shank me,
and the other one repeatedly punched me in the
face.  They took my wallet, my credit card, my
shoes, my socks, my shirt.  It was about 40 degrees
outside.  And they tried to spend $3,000 on my
credit card.  They're criminals.  Those are the
people that I have to get my medicine from.

So one other thing I'd like to share

is holy anointing oil.  In the Bible it refers to
kaneh bosm which has been traced to cannabis, and I
have something here that shows that as well.  And
Jesus used it all the time.  If you look in the
Bible, when Jesus healed people, he used holy
anointing oil which contains six pounds of
cannabis.

So that would be possession with
intent to deliver, so we like to think we've come a
long way in the last 2,000 years, and if pharmacide
came, we wouldn't arrest him.  We would treat him
with open arms.  But the fact is if Jesus lived in
the United States, he'd be in jail the rest of his
life.

So I hope you guys will take some of
this into account, and if anybody would like to
talk to me, I have a mailing list going, and
Iowapatients.org is a website I started, so if you
have any questions, please feel free to ask.  Thank
you.

LLOYD JESSEN:  Thank you.  Is Gail
Klodt here?

GAIL KLODT:  Hi.  I'm Gail Klodt, and
I'm not going to go into any real stories.
However, what I want to talk about is the issue

The studies are out there that prove
that people who are being treated for serious
disease have improved.  They have better rates of
successful treatment due to the delivery method of
marijuana, smoking, whether it be in a bong,
whatever, as opposed to Marinol which is a
synthetic drug and can actually kill you.

This is due to the -- the metabolizing
effect of a synthetic pill, which is very difficult
for someone to take if they're on a treatment for
serious disease and they're nauseous anyway as
opposed to being able to smoke it and
self-regulate.

The downside of that is anybody that's
on a chemical treatment for cancer or Hepatitis C
or any other thing that the need constant,
continuous, nondenied medications is, you know, it
does help the need.  Yes, this is good.  It helps
the body heal.  It helps relax them.  It aids in
sleeping, which Marinol cannot do.  It simply
knocks them out.

The downside is they get the munchies.
You might be dealing with fatty liver disease

Marinol is normally dismissed by
patients due to the intense side effects, and
patients are more and more finding themselves
having to seek out marijuana which at this point in
time, even though most of us do have a clue, I
think most of us are not opposed to using
marijuana.  Anybody that gets sick is going to look
for these things because they can self-regulate.
No one has ever ODed on it.  It does work and help
alleviate side effects of medical treatments, but
we have the legal issue.

The states that have allowed it for
medicinal use are currently fighting the federal
government, so it doesn't matter if Iowa does allow
this.  What are we going to get out of it?  We're
going to still fight the federal government.

Part of the problem with -- with the
issue if we ever do across the board in the United
States legalize this is, how are we going to
regulate it?  Because there are dangers that do go
with marijuana smoking, depending upon how it was
cured, and considering that everyone that ever
seeks it out to use it for chemical treatment for
disease is basically at the mercy of dealers.

As with anything that you inhale,
there is issues of molds and everything else if
it's not cured properly, so you can end up with a
secondary problem; mainly aspergillus or
mycotoxins, and that can lead to chronic COPD.

So my proposal would be -- if we can
ever get this nationally and get on page together
and get into the 21st century is we need to start
looking at the people that are really doing a good
job at growing very good marijuana and get them
regulated, get them inspected, and you know, let's
move forward into the 21st century.

I do not advocate using it while
driving.  I do not advocate using it for
recreational purposes, but I do know, including
myself, that I could not have gotten through
48 weeks of an extremely brutal treatment,
including a trial drug, without being able to use
it, and I haven't smoked for over 20 years.  I do
not use it at this point.

Recently they have been coming out
with more articles, the Marijuanapolicyproject.org,
and we're seeing more and more overdoses of people
that are getting a lot of narcotics for chronic
pain issues and other things because they're not

I would certainly attribute that to
the use of being able to use marijuana freely
because it does have a profound effect upon the
mental attitude and the state of mind of a patient,
whether it be for Hepatitis C, cancer, multiple
sclerosis, or any other chronic disease or
something that would require a brutal chemical
treatment to possibly cure.  Mental attitude is
everything.

And considering I finished this, I'll
end it.

LLOYD JESSEN:  Gail, I've got a
question.  Are your comments coming to us as a
patient then?

GAIL KLODT:  Yes. My comments are
coming as a patient and also being an advocate of

LLOYD JESSEN:  Thank you.

GAIL KLODT:  Anybody else before I
leave?

LLOYD JESSEN:  Is Stephan Arndt here?

STEPHAN ARNDT:  I am Stephan Arndt.
I'm the director of the Iowa Consortium for
Substance Abuse Research and the United Way at the
University of Iowa.  I'm also a professor of
psychiatry, although I'm not an M.D. I'm a Ph.D.
and a professor of biostatistics at the College of
Public Health, and there's one other thing because
it does have bearing.  I am a member of the data
safety management committee for NIMH and have been
in that position for about nine years and also for
the Department of Defense.

So I just had a couple of points. I
think some of the major issues in terms of the
benefits of marijuana are clear.  There are some.
And we know that.

Now, the question is about the adverse
effects.  And I just had really two things to say.
I won't be repetitious.  One, we're not talking
about unrestricted street use here, but you know,
about 30 percent of the treatment admissions in

Now, this sounds like a lot.  Iowa is
one of the lowest drug-using states in the country,
and to put that further into context, 50 percent of
those treatment admissions are for alcohol, and so
you know, weighing the alcohol versus marijuana
issue, alcohol wins by a lot.

Another statistic. Only about 1 or
2 percent of public -- publicly funded treatment
center admissions are for prescribed drugs like
benzodiazepines and other stimulants used for
prescribed uses.  What that says to me is people
generally don't abuse the drugs that are keeping
them healthy.

So with that said, my read on the
adverse event situation or issues, is it true that
marijuana in a large meta-analysis has more adverse
events than placebo.  However, those are adverse
events such as dizziness, nausea, restlessness,
maybe some anxiety.  They're classified as the
minor adverse events.

On serious adverse events, the
meta-analysis -- this was done on -- published last
year in Canada by the Canadian Medical
Association -- indicates that there's no

As far as abuse characteristics, I
think that's also we don't have any long-term
follow-ups because these studies generally tend to
be short-lived and not followed up for very long,
but not one of the serious adverse events included
addiction.  So there's no evidence that it causes
addiction, at least through some people.  That's
not to say that there aren't problems when it's on
the street.  I don't want to be taken out of
context there.

And that's all.

LLOYD JESSEN:  Thank you.  Do we have
Speaker No. 7 yet?  No. 7?  If not, our next
scheduled is at 1:50, and it's 1:35 right
now.  Why don't we take a ten-minute break.

DEBORAH LABEAU:  Excuse me.  I'm here
for 2:10.  I can give my talk now.

LLOYD JESSEN:  Oh, that would be fine.
Thank you.

DEBORAH LABEAU:  Good afternoon.  I'm
Dr. Deborah LaBeau.  I'm an OB/GYN practicing right

I was asked through a survey actually
whether or not I would advocate for the medicinal
use of marijuana, and I in my own crooked way when
I had checked yes on the survey and was contacted
by some people that asked if I would be able to
come in today and talk, and I thought, you know,
that's probably not a bad idea.  They probably need
a little input from an M.D. on this.

Some of my background, I went to the
Uniform Services University of Health Sciences for
my medical degree.  That's the military medical
school.  I was an Army doctor for 15 years, did my
residency at Walter Reed, served my country, and
then went into private practice about 12 years ago.

And I'm advocating for the medicinal
use of marijuana.  I think in this country there's
a general bias against the use of marijuana,
primarily because of the propaganda put out by the
War on Drugs.  This prejudice is misleading and
ill-placed in a rational debate on marijuana's
medical advantages.

Because of this sordid reputation,
many medical professionals are unwilling to jump

I like to think that I'm speaking for
many of my colleagues who hesitate to come forward
because of this prejudice.  When I polled several
of my fellow physicians, they confirmed this belief.

I find it ridiculous that as a doctor,
I'm able to prescribe dozens of medications with
potent and dangerous side effects much more adverse
than marijuana, which is currently illegal.  Some
examples of Schedule II drugs I'm currently able to
prescribe are morphine, cocaine, PCP, methadone,
and methamphetamine.

Marijuana has been relegated to
Schedule I status alongside heroin and LSD as a
drug which has high abuse potential and no medical
efficacy.  This conclusion is patently wrong and
has been disabused by evidence based on scientific
studies which indicate that medical use of
marijuana has found a wide variety of applications
in treating the symptoms associated with chronic
wasting as a result of chemotherapy, HIV-related
neuropathy, Hepatitis C, and multiple sclerosis.

The American College of Physicians has
come out in favor of more scientific research in
the therapeutic role of marijuana in a position
paper that was published last year.  Research
itself is tightly confined by the role of the
National Institute of Drug Abuse who oversees the
growing and preparation of research-grade marijuana
for medicinal use and study in this country.
Because of the controls effectively placed on its
research by NIDA, good studies have been stifled.

Marijuana's medicinal use has been
known for and used by healers for centuries.  It
was in the U.S. pharmacopeia until 1942 when it was
removed after the drug was made illegal.

In 1997 the White House's Office of
National Drug Control Policy asked the Institute of
Medicine to investigate marijuana's risks and
benefits.  The IOM concluded that marijuana and its
cannabinoids have therapeutic benefits for treating
many illnesses and conditions.  Marijuana has no
physical addiction, unlike opiates and
benzodiazepines, and it has low lethal toxicity,
making it relatively safe in comparison to many
other drugs used today to treat pain and disease.

The IOM has concluded that when

Medical marijuana deserves a rational
debate in our medical community because the ones
who lose are the patients who would benefit most
from this treatment.  To date, 13 states have
already legalized medical marijuana.  I think it's
time for Iowa.

Thank you.  Questions?

LLOYD JESSEN:  Thank you, Doctor.

DEBORAH LABEAU:  Thank you.

LLOYD JESSEN:  Do we have anyone else
who has signed up to speak?  Do you have numbers?

DUSTIN KRUTSINGER:  I'm No. 8.

JENNIFER HUSMANN:  I'm just at
2 o'clock but if somebody --

LLOYD JESSEN:  Okay.  Yeah.  Let's
take -- or do we have a No. 7?  I think seven was

DUSTIN KRUTSINGER:  All right.  Well,
I appreciate you guys having this hearing and
considering this.

LLOYD JESSEN:  Can we have your name,
please?

DUSTIN KRUTSINGER:  I'm sorry.  My
name is Dustin Krutsinger.  I appreciate you guys
having a hearing and thinking about this issue.

I'm a second year medical student here
at the University of Iowa.  Before that I was --
practiced for six years as a registered nurse in
the critical I.C.U. here at Iowa, so that -- during
that time I have administered as a nurse many drugs
that have much worse adverse effects than
marijuana.  Granted, it was in an I.C.U. setting
where we had monitors and such, but those drugs
were passed through the system and allowed for use
based on weighing a cost-benefit analysis, and
that's what I ask for when you consider this
marijuana used for treatment.

I ask that you take away the stigma
that's associated with marijuana and the history
behind it and look at the science.  Is there a

And just weigh that.  Forget about the
stigma.  Weigh the cost-benefit, and treat it as
any other pharmaceutical drug that is coming into
the system for consideration.  Thank you.

LLOYD JESSEN:  Thank you.  Is Matt
Johnson here?  Matt Johnson?  Okay.  Then we could
take Jennifer.

JENNIFER HUSMANN:  Hi.  My name is
Jennifer Husmann.  I live in Center Junction, Jones
County, Iowa.  I'm a certified prevention
specialist with the Area Substance Abuse Council
(ASAC) with a degree in social work.  My office is
in the Mt. Vernon schools in rural Linn County.

I have coordinated projects to reduce
alcohol and other substance abuse for the past five
years with eight school districts in rural Linn and
Jones Counties.

Besides providing education and
programs for youth and forming coalitions in each
community, the school projects I've been involved

LLOYD JESSEN:  Jennifer?

JENNIFER HUSMANN:  Yes.

LLOYD JESSEN:  I ask you to just slow
down a little bit for our reporter.  It might be
hard for her to catch everything.

JENNIFER HUSMANN:  Sure I tend to
talk fast.  Sorry.  And my kids now attend college
in Linn and Dubuque County.

I'm against the legalization of
medical marijuana, as are my agency and coalitions.
Before coming here today, I requested data from
ASAC's data department on the drugs of choice for
clients seen for treatment at our agency.  For
youth age 18 and younger, 67 percent, more than
two-thirds, list marijuana as their primary drug of
choice. Alcohol ranked second for youth.

For adult clients over 18, 22 percent
list marijuana as their primary drug of choice.
Marijuana ranked second to alcohol for adults
obtaining treatment at ASAC.

As in the whole state of Iowa,

Marijuana use has many negative
effects for both youth and adults, but it is
particularly harmful to youth because they are
still maturing.  There is increased risk of major
psychological problems like depression, panic
attacks, and schizophrenia.  I just learned about
the increased risk of schizophrenia and other major
mental illnesses myself this summer as new studies
came across my desk.

A major medical journal recently
reported "Cannabis use is associated with increased
risk of developing schizophrenia, consistent with
causal relation.  This association is not explained
by use of other psychoactive drugs or personality
traits relating to social integration."

Marijuana users have more suicidal
thoughts and are four times more likely to report
symptoms of depression than people who never used
the drug.  And I'm not going to say all the
sources, but I do have them here, and most of them
I received from the website of the Iowa Governor's

But I am -- I have an immediate family
member with significant mental illness, and
frankly, the idea of increased risk of mental
problems in our society because of more possibly
sanctioned marijuana use really frightens me as a
parent and as a prevention specialist.

Smoking marijuana has been proven to
be more carcinogenic than smoking cigarettes, yet
students often get the message from the media and
friends that it is somehow less dangerous than both
alcohol and cigarettes, particularly because they
hear about the efforts trying to legalize medical
marijuana.

According to the National Institute on
Drug Abuse, smoking three to four marijuana joints
is as bad for your lungs as smoking twenty
cigarettes.  Marijuana smoke contains 50 to
70 percent more carcinogenic hydrocarbons than does
tobacco smoke.

The former deputy director of the
White House Office of National Drug Control Policy
stated "By characterizing the use of illegal drugs

States that allow marijuana to be used
as medicine are more likely to have higher use and
higher initiation rates.  And this might be
slightly outdated.  It's 2008.  So eight of ten
states with the highest percentage of past month
marijuana users also are states with medical
marijuana programs.  Five of the ten states with
the highest percentage of new youth marijuana users
are also states with medical marijuana programs.

Having medical marijuana legalized in
a state seems to increase access to youth.  And in
those states where it is legal, only a small amount
of marijuana dispensary customers actually have
AIDS, glaucoma, or cancer, ailments for which
marijuana as medicine is advocated by proponents.
The vast majority of medical marijuana customers
are relatively young.  Almost four out of five are
age 40 or younger.

Marijuana use has been associated with
poor performance in school.  One report shows youth
with an average rate of D or below are more than
four times as likely to have used marijuana in the
past year as youths with an average grade of an A.
Why would we want marijuana to be more accessible
to youth at a time when we are working so hard to
increase our youths' potential with their
education?

Heavy marijuana use impairs the
ability of young people to concentrate or retain
information during their peak learning years.  THC
changes the way sensory information gets into and
is processed by the part of the brain crucial for
learning and memory.

Studies indicate marijuana may
interfere with brain function and create problems
with the perception of time, making the user less
adept at tasks that require sustained attention.

There are many other increased risks
for youth and adults using marijuana, including
delinquency, more sexual partners, and unsafe sex
and drugged driving accidents to name a few.

"A federal report released in 2002
concluded the younger children are when they first

Marijuana is often used as a
stepping-stone drug leading to heroin, cocaine, and
other harder drugs.  In other words, people
experiment with what is often thought of as a
harmless drug.  Then after using it for a while, a
bigger high is sought.  Thus, users then tend to
turn to harder stuff like heroin, LSD, cocaine, et
cetera.  This is a particular problem because most
people will not directly start abusing the harder
drugs that are generally understood to be harmful.
Marijuana use may simply embolden them to
experiment.

Anytime something is made legal, it
increases the accessibility to children.  All too
often, kids and teenagers get their hands on
alcohol or cigarettes, legal drugs for adults.  We
shouldn't let this same thing happen with
marijuana.  I believe we should listen to the FDA's
warning that smoking marijuana is not approved for

We do not need to start another
problem with more people being exposed to the
dangers of secondhand smoke from legalizing medical
marijuana.  We already have enough of a problem in
Iowa with 27 percent of 11th graders reporting
having used marijuana in their lifetime according
to the 2008 Iowa Youth Survey.

Additionally, 12 percent of 11th
graders reported using marijuana in 30 days prior
to taking the survey.  In Linn and Jones County
alone, 15 percent of 11th graders reported past
30-day marijuana use.  This number increased
significantly between the 2005 Iowa Youth Survey
report and the current one.

In the schools I work with -- one of
the schools I work with, 11th graders reported
having ever used in their lifetime was as high as
35 percent.

We are dealing with a substance that
has also increased in potency significantly since

Hazards associated with exposure to
THC include acute neurological effects and
long-term effects on brain development, the
reproductive system, and the immune system,
particularly in adolescents.

Finally, I believe, similar to what
was written in the Office of National Drug Control
Policy publication, What Americans Need to Know
About Marijuana, well-financed and organized
campaigns to legalize marijuana is harmless or may
even have health benefits.  These campaigns are led
not by medical professionals or patients-rights
groups but by pro-drug donors and organizations in
a cynical attempt to exploit the suffering of sick
people.

Instead of considering legalizing
medical marijuana, we need to continue and increase
a balanced approach to prevention, enforcement, and
treatment of all drug use.  Overall drug use is
down by more than a third in the last 20 years.
Ninety-five percent of Americans do not use drugs.
Why would we want to wipe out our progress?

For all the reasons I've listed, I
would prefer the board not to consider any movement
toward moving marijuana into a lesser controlled
substance schedule.

LLOYD JESSEN:  I'm sorry.  Can I
interrupt your -- we're in control of this hearing
and we will say who you can and cannot ask questions,
and I would also like to say that each speaker
needs to be treated with the respect that they
deserve.

We've not heard anyone booed here
today who has spoken in favor of it, and I will not
have anyone who speaks against it be booed.  So
thank you for that cooperation.

LISA JACKSON:  I have no intentions
of --

LLOYD JESSEN:  No.  I just needed to
say that because I want each speaker here to be
treated respectfully.  I won't tolerate anything
else.

LISA JACKSON:  No.  I agree
100 percent.  I'm curious as to --

LLOYD JESSEN:  And if you're going to
ask a question, would you please state your name
first.

Yes.  My name is Lisa
Jackson.  I'm from Crawfordsville.  I spoke
earlier.

JENNIFER HUSMANN:  I didn't hear that.

LISA JACKSON:  That's all right.  You
missed out.

I have a question.  What does the
children -- we are not here to advocate getting
this to children.  I will agree 100 percent.
Children have no need. We are here because some of
us cannot function out of our beds without it.

Now, I think this is absurd to ignore
this stuff, but what does -- the drugs are out
there.  The children are getting them.  You already
stated that.

LLOYD JESSEN:  Yeah.  Lisa, I
appreciate what you're saying, but this is not a
debate.  I'm sorry.  We're not here to debate the
speakers.

She is here to give her view, and
we've asked her to come if she wanted to give the
board her opinion, and she's been gracious enough
to do that, and we thank her for that, and we are
not going to subject our speakers to any
questioning or harassment.  They didn't sign up for

LISA JACKSON:  I didn't mean to
harass.

LLOYD JESSEN:  All right.

JENNIFER HUSMANN: I'd be willing to
answer any questions outside of this.

LLOYD JESSEN: Thank you.  And if you
want to continue your discussion outside of this
room, that's fine.  But thank you so much.

JENNIFER HUSMANN:  Because I do have a
main point on that.

LLOYD JESSEN:  Is Matt Johnson here?
Matt Johnson.  Do we have a Speaker No. 7 or 9?  We
can take No. 9 now.

(Off the record discussion.)

DAVID KING:  Are we going to continue
in the dark then?

LLOYD JESSEN:  Yeah.  Can you go
ahead?  All right.  Yeah.  If you could state your
name.

DAVID KING:  My name is David King.  I
live in Columbus Junction, Iowa.  And I find it
appropriate that we're in the Bowen Science
Building because for too long this whole issue has
been surrounded in just cynical exploitation, I