77
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
would agree, but for political gain or, you know,
people who have different moral values.
The two issues that it seems to me are
safety and effectiveness. I've been here since the
hearing started. I believe we've heard from three
different physicians. Every one of them said in
some manner or way it is effective. So I feel that
right there we have dealt with, is it effective?
As for safety, I'm guessing that the
members of the pharmacy board are indeed
pharmacists. Oh. Oh.
BOARD MEMBER WHITWORTH:
I am one of
the public members, so your specific pharmacy
questions probably are wasted on me.
DAVID KING: I am also not a
pharmacist nor a scientist nor a doctor. I can
read. And I like to read.
And I know that statistically more
people in America die every year from prescription
78
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
drug overdoses than all illegal drugs combined. So
right there -- right there we have addressed the
safety issue. It's obviously safer than substances
that physicians feel do have a place in medicine,
you know, like the -- the opiates, the morphine,
or -- or what have you.
But just the fact that someone else
mentioned alcohol. Alcohol is a drug. I'm not
aware that alcohol has any legitimate medical
benefit. I could be wrong. Once again, I'm not a
doctor. But yet we do allow adults in a controlled
manner access to alcohol.
I'm not even talking about that for
recreation. I'm talking about let the scientists,
the doctors, look at the actual scientific data for
effectiveness and safety, and that should be the
only thing that we're discussing. Is it effective
and is it safe?
And that's all I have to say. Thank
you.
LLOYD JESSEN: Thank you.
Matt
Johnson? Do we have a Speaker No. 7 or No. 10?
Okay. We will take a break now. It's almost
2 o'clock. We don't have another speaker scheduled
until 2:30. Why don't we come back in 15 minutes.
79
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
(Short recess.)
LLOYD JESSEN: We're going to go
ahead
and get started again. It's now about 2:20. And
we'd like to just for the sake of reminding new
people who may have joined us, this hearing is not
an opportunity for debate. We're not here to
debate with our presenters. We're here to receive
the information they've come to give to us.
And we're also here only to talk about
the medical use of marijuana and not about the
legalization of marijuana for nonmedicinal
purposes.
Do we have a Matt Johnson here who
would like to speak? Okay. Then we're ready for
Speaker No. 10.
LLOYD JESSEN: If you could go
up
front, please, and there's a microphone and if you
could state your name and address.
80
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
reporter can get down your remarks.
CAROLINE DIETERLE: My name
is
Caroline Dieterle. I'm nearly 72. My academic
background is in botany. I have degrees from the
University of Michigan and University of California
at Berkeley.
And when I hear and read in the paper
about -- about the effects of marijuana, some of
them conducted by the University of Iowa Hospitals
and Clinics, I'm always irritated that they're
focusing on the question of whether it causes
memory loss. To me this is like objecting or
studying aspirin because you object to the fact
that it relieves pain.
One of the benefits of marijuana that
I experienced personally was the ability to make
you forget. In 1978 I was subjected to an
exceedingly trying personal trauma that left me
depressed, anxious, suicidal partly, and this was
a serious situation because I had three small
children and was faced with needing to support
them.
And thanks to marijuana, I was able to
keep my job, care for my children, and bring them
up properly. Talking about this problem in my life
81
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
is still difficult for me, but marijuana has made
me remain a functional citizen in this society,
paying my taxes, doing my duties. When I used it,
it kept me in a functional state. I think there
are a lot of people for whom this is true.
And I wish that the people who
investigate marijuana would look at the benefits of
forgetting as well as the possible problems it
causes.
This was brought into very sharp focus
by the chapter in the book by Michael Pollan, The
Botany of Desire. I have copied a few pages from
that and am going to hand that in as part of my
testimony because this power of forgetting that it
induces allows you to forget your pain and focus on
the moment so that you can eat, sleep, care for
your children, cook their meals, go to work, and do
those things and not focus on your difficulties.
Another thing that I would like to
hand in is copies of the pages from the Physician's
Desk Reference of Herbal Remedies because this is
published in 1998, and there are many categories
that are listed in this reference that list
marijuana as a therapeutic agent.
Now, they do go on to say that not all
82
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
of these have been proven by scientific studies. I
don't know how much scientific work has gone into
focusing on how well mint satisfies or takes care
of stomach problems or how well chamomile induces
sleep. There are many plants that have effects of
one kind or another that nobody has taken any time
to investigate. I mean there are so many plants,
and you can only do so many studies. Gardeners
know that lettuce is inducing sleep, but you don't
have any of the studies out there that I know of
showing that.
So the fact that people have used
these for centuries, have used these plants that
the guide reference for herbals mentioned for
centuries doesn't weigh anything in the minds of
many people, but for the people who have used these
plants successfully, they are viewed as very useful
and, in fact, savior plants.
You know, unlike mint, chamomile, or
echinacea, cannabis has been stigmatized by such
propaganda tactics as Reefer Madness and Marco
Polo's Story of the Assassins. But those who have
benefited from it can identify with Galileo who had
to recant his testimony in front of his Spanish
inquisition about the studies of the nature of the
83
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
universe but who turned away, and knowing in his
heart that he was right, he said "And yet -- and
yet, that is the way it is."
And I think that people who use
marijuana successfully would agree with me that the
proof is in the pudding, and we have eaten it, and
please don't make us do this illegally.
Thank you very much.
ANTHONY HARDEN: Good afternoon,
everyone. My name is Anthony Harden. I was born
with cystic fibrosis, a genetic lung disease which
also causes mild absorption of fats. I've got some
pancreatic deficiencies, and I've got CF bone
disease which my body doesn't process calcium
correctly at times.
I was prescribed marijuana in 2006 by
my doctor, Douglas Hornick, at the University of
Iowa. He's an adult pulmonologist. At that time
my lung capacity was probably about 35, 40 percent,
84
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
and I was starting to have arresting heart rate of
over 100 beats per minute. My body was using lots
and lots of calories, and as part of my diet and my
malabsorption of the foods I would intake, fats, et
cetera, Dr. Hornick prescribed me with a drug. I
believe it was called Megace, and I had to take it
in the form of syringes and inject it into my
mouth, and I'd do about five to six syringes per
morning and afternoon, and it was just not a very
good taste, and it didn't -- it didn't produce the
appetite stimulation that we were looking for.
I had had some previous experience
with marijuana, and at that time I addressed with
him the possibility of being prescribed Marinol or
dronabinol, I think, is the generic term, which is
what I take now, ten milligrams twice a day, and I
was required to take up to 6,000 calories per day,
which was impossible for me to do. The struggle to
breathe alone was enough.
As my disease progressed, I gradually
dropped my lung capacity from 30 percent down to
20 percent. I was lung transplanted in St. Louis
at Barnes Jewish Hospital on January 30 of 2008.
And since that time, my lungs have been -- it's a
whole new world, I should say, as far as my
85
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
breathing goes.
My marijuana use -- well, it hasn't
subsided. I still do use marijuana as opposed to
using the dronabinol. I find the effects of the
dronabinol for appetite stimulation to be somewhat
inconsistent at times, and for my bones that I have
the aches from the CF bone disease. I use the
marijuana to help instead of taking narcotics like
codeine, Hydrocodone, Percocet. I can stand here
and name them all off. I've had quite a few since
my lung transplant.
And since that time, after my
transplant, I also had an acute rejection of the
lungs, which required a large dose of a drug called
Rituxan followed by one year of monthly IVIG
treatments. The IVIG treatments would -- would
cause headaches, fatigue, muscle soreness, lack of
appetite, and during that time I would use
marijuana in an eaten form, not smoked, to help
with the headaches, the fatigue, the muscle
soreness, and to stimulate my appetite.
It has been one of the most beneficial
plant blessings I think I could have come upon for
my transplant and post-transplant. Its effects
have -- have helped me to maintain a healthy weight
86
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
and strength and a positive attitude going into a
lung transplant with a terminal illness without any
use of any kind of antidepressant whatsoever.
And for me, it has just been -- it's
been a gift. And I think it's been a gift to all
of us we've just happened to pass over for -- since
the '30s, and I really hope to have your
consideration for its benefits and its use amongst
a wide variety of ailments and problems because for
me, it's -- it's kept me here.
It's given me new life, and it's
helped me move in a direction forward where I can
be a productive member of society still and
continue to stay healthy and strive for the
betterment of all of us.
I thank you for your time today, and I
hope that soon we may sew the seeds of medicine and
health.
LLOYD JESSEN: Thank you.
Do we have
a Dr. Bradford Stiles yet? All right. Do we have
a Speaker No. 12? Is Ann Du Bois here? Ann, would
you like to speak early?
87
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
everyone. My name is Ann Du Bois, and I live in
Fairfield.
I want to correct a previous statement
at the Des Moines hearing. I misspoke when I
referred to a study published in Prevention
Research Journal. What I meant to say was the
journal Cancer Prevention Research in reference to
a July 2009 study of cannabis cancer prevention.
Okay. Before I begin, I have a quick
question, mabye by showing of the hands, seriously.
This is for the board and staff and the audience.
Who has read or been made to read George Orwell's
1984 book? Anybody? George Orwell was really Eric
Blair who lived in England and India from 1902 to
1950 and wrote what he meant to be a satirical
novel, 1984.
One more question for everybody. Have
you read Jack Herer's The Emperor Wears No Clothes?
ANN DU BOIS: Staff? I recommend
it.
It is rewarding reading, and it could inform your
opinion very much.
Okay. Back to Orwell. At Buckingham
Palace, March 2009 Felipe Calderon was presented
with a first edition of George Orwell's
88
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
nightmare-ish book which tells of the totalitarian
regime and coined the concept Big Brother by the
queen herself.
In Mexico this August when sixth
graders returned to their classrooms, many were
stunned to discover that nearly 30 pages had
disappeared from their history textbooks. The
missing pages discussed the European Conquest of
Mexico and three centuries of colonial rule, the
conquest of an estimated 25 million indigenous
people, the cruel indignities the indigenas
suffered under the Spanish yoke. This further
depreciates the role of Mexico's Indians and flies
in the face of the country's traditional
anti-colonial trajectory.
What's my point? The 1984 party
slogan, who controls the past controls the future.
Who controls the present controls the past. Today
the 5,000 year medical history of cannabis has
almost been forgotten.
In the United States because of the
Marihuana Tax Act of 1937, it was removed from the
pharmacopeia. Now it is confined to schedule I
under the Controlled Substances Act as a drug that
has ahigh potential for abuse, lacks an accepted
89
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
medical use, and is unsafe for medical use under
medical supervision.
What does this have to do with why we
are all here today? Because way back in April,
Judge Novak's ruling states "The board must
determine whether the evidence presented by the
petitioner, meaning Carl Olsen, is sufficient to
support a finding that marijuana has accepted
medical use in the United States and does not lack
accepted safety for use in treatment under medical
supervision."
Instead of acting as mandated by Iowa
state code, instead of being in compliance with the
Controlled Substance, and while acting in
contempt of court orders, the board scheduled these
meetings.
I hold you in contempt. If I thought
I could get away with a citizen's arrest, I would
have brought the duct tape. When you accepted your
appointment, you accepted the responsibility to
make an independent determination on state
scheduling, to act for the health and the best
interest of the good of the people of Iowa. Not as
politicians, as scientists. Science should be in
the hands of scientists, not political ideologues.
90
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
I saw a video of the board's meeting
in response to Carl's success. What I witnessed
was Orwellian. Board member complaints ranged
from, and I quote, "a lack of science and any
up-to-date more recent information" to "having a
very difficult time saying there was any type of
scientific-based type of evidence given
that day" to "I don't have anything else to add,
but I didn't see any what I would call
scientific-based evidence" to a bizarre playing of
the "Well, if all your friends jumped off the
bridge, does that mean you should jump off the
bridge?" card.
To quote George, "All political
thinking for years past has been vitiated in the
same way. People can foresee the future only when
it coincides with their own wishes, and the most
grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are
unwelcome. Political language is designed to make
lies sound truthful and murder respectable and to
give an appearance of solidity to pure wind."
Between 1840 and 1900, European and
American medical journals published more than
100 articles on the therapeutic use of cannabis
indica. The Indian Hemp Paper -- I'm sorry. The
91
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
Indian Hemp Drugs Commission Report from 1894, an
exhaustive seven-volume, 3,281-page report that
concludes "Moderate cannabis use produces
practically no ill effects."
The Panama Canal Military Study from
1916 to 1929 concluded "There is no evidence that
marijuana is habit-forming." So it can be said
that the 100 years between 1837 and 1937 were truly
the Golden Age of Medical Cannabis.
President Franklin Roosevelt, a 33rd
degree Freemason and one of the greatest
illuminists who ever lived once uttered a statement
that is shockingly bold. He said "If something
happened, you can bet it was planned."
When the Federal Bureau of Narcotics
was formed in 1932, Harry Anslinger was appointed
its head. Treasury agents were beginning to
operate on their own agendas. Deep in the throes
of the Depression, Congress began to re-examine all
federal agencies. Anslinger began to fear that his
department was in danger of emasculation.
Although worldwide, hemp was still a
huge business, in 1935 the treasury department
began secretly drafting a bill called the Marihuana
Tax Act. The treasury department's general
92
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
counsel, Herman Oliphant, was put in charge of
writing something that could get past both Congress
and court disguised as a tax revenue bill.
So in 1937 Anslinger went before a
poorly attended committee hearing and called for a
total ban on marijuana. He stated under oath "This
drug is entirely the monster Hyde, the harmful
effects of which cannot be measured."
Bureaucrats planned a hearing to avoid
discussion of the full House and presented the
measure in the guise of a tax revenue bill brought
to the six-member House Ways and Means Committee.
This bypassed the House without further hearing and
passed it over to the Senate finance committee
where it was rubber-stamped into law. Once on the
books, Anslinger would administer the licensing
process to make sure that no more commercial hemp
was ever grown in the United States.
At the last minute, a few pro-hemp
witnesses showed up. Dr. William C. Woodward, also
legal counsel for the American Medical Association,
spoke in defense of cannabis medicine and in
protest of the way the bill was handled.
Asked point-blank if he thought
federal legislation was necessary, he replied "I do
93
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
not. It is not medical addiction that is
involved. Woodward went on to criticize the way
the word marijuana had been used deliberately to
confuse both the medical and industrial hemp
communities.
"In all you have heard here thus far,
no mention has been made of any excess use of the
drug or its excessive distribution by any
pharmacist, and yet the burden -- and yet the
burden of this bill is placed heavily on the
doctors and pharmacists of this country, and may I
say very heavily, most heavily possibly of all, on
the farmers of this country.
"We cannot understand yet why this
bill should have been prepared in secret for two
years without any initiative, even to the
profession, that it was being prepared. No medical
man would identify this bill with a medicine until
he read through it because marijuana is not a drug,
simply a name given to cannabis."
A few days later Representative Fred
Vision of Kentucky was asked to summarize the AMA's
position. He lied. He lied to the effect the
medical group -- he lied to the effect the medical
group's legislative counsel, Woodward, "Not only
94
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
gave this measure full support but also the
approval from the AMA."
The act passed without a role call.
Passage of the act put all hemp industries firmly
under the control of very special interests that
benefited most from its repression over the years,
prohibition police and bureaucrats working in
collusion with petrochemical companies, timber
companies, alcohol, drug industries, the
pharmaceutical drug companies, and today, the urine
testing, property seizure, police, and prison
industries.
Congress banned hemp because it was
said to be the most violence-causing drug known.
In September 1937 hemp became illegal. The most
useful crop known became a drug, and our planet has
suffered ever since.
New York City Mayor Fiorello La
Guardia who in response to the 1937 federal ban on
pot requested a report from the New York Academy of
Medicine which concluded marijuana was not
medically addictive, not under the control of a
single organized group, did not lead to hard drugs,
and was not the determining factor in the
commission of major crimes and that publicity
95
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
concerning the catastrophic effects of marijuana
smoking in New York was unfounded.
18th century German philosopher Georg
Friedrich Hegel Long ago developed, among other
things, what he called a principle of thesis,
antithesis, synthesis to explain the process of
deliberately enacting social disorder and change as
a road to power. To achieve a desired result, one
deliberately creates a situation, the thesis,
devises a solution to the problem created by that
situation, antithesis, with a final result being
the ultimate goal of more power and control.
The U.S. government in its so-called
War on Drugs made this process a keystone of their
drive for total control of all individual actions
that in their view were not, in Mussolini's terms,
inside the state and thus controllable by the same.
The War on Drugs is merely a horrible
extension and intensification of these
tried-and-true Hegelian methods, a war in which we
all lose.
Quoting from a Trojan Horse:
Anti-Communism and the War on Drugs by Bruce
Bullington and Alan Block, administration of
justice, their abstract, "This work argues the U.S.
96
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
War on Drugs is a misnomer. We suggest, instead,
that it is secondary to traditional anti-Communist
foreign policy concerns. Thus, the War on Drugs
serves to mask the U.S. counter-intelligence and
paramilitary presence abroad.
In the '80s top U.S. CIA, to fund the
Afghan radicals, the Mujahideen, in their fight
against the Soviets decided to generate funds
through the poppy rich Afghan soil and heroin
production and smuggling to finance the Afghan war.
Senator John Kerry's 1988 U.S. Committee on Foreign
Relations report on the contradrug links concluded
that members of the U.S. State Department are
involved in drug trafficking.
In 1996 journalist Gary Webb published
reports detailing how Contras had received crack
cocaine into Los Angeles to fund weapons purchases.
Like a war on terrorism, the War on
Drugs is a true war waged by the U.S. Government
against its own people.
At present the greatest danger in
medical use of marijuana is its illegality which
imposes much anxiety and expense on suffering
people, forces them to bargain with illicit drug
dealers, and exposes them to the threat of criminal
97
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
prosecution.
Even Harry Anslinger admitted it
wasn't a gateway drug until it was made illegal.
Richard Lawrence Miller's Drug Warriors and Their
Prey draws detailed comparisons of the War on Drugs
in the U.S. today with the events in 1930 Germany
that led to Hitler's Third Reich and the attempted
destruction of the Jewish people.
ANN DUBOIS: The world -- I'm going
to quote Albert Einstein. The world is a dangerous
place to live and not because of the people who are
evil but because of the good people who don't do
anything about it.
98
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
Iowa does not have the authority,
either the board or the Iowa legislature, to say
marijuana does not have accepted medical use in the
United States because 12 states -- 13 states say it
does have accepted medical use, and federal law
gives those states the right to make the
determination, and federal law does not have a
definition for accepted medical use.
Will you stand on the right side of
history or stand with the feckless schills of big
pharma, big gov, having made whores of your souls?
Thank you.
(Off-the-record discussion.)
ROBERT MANKE: So difficult for me to
read. I'm not going to have glasses. I'm Robert
Manke. I live in Des Moines, and I want to show
you something that bears my name.
This is a medication called Fentora.
99
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
Everybody has heard of morphine. Everybody has
heard of Oxycodone. This is Fentanyl gas in a pill
form. It can kill you so dead, you just wouldn't
believe it. You wouldn't believe the warnings
that's on this stuff. This bears my name. I have
a script for it.
This is a bottle of morphine. That's
Seroquel. I'm going to tell you, SSRI will kill
you so dead and addict you so bad, you just
wouldn't believe it. What's this one? Oh, yeah.
Here's the Oxycodone. Levorhyroxine because I'm a
cancer patient. More morphine. That's all I
brought with me for now. But I take it all, folks.
I get all of it.
I spent two months this year visiting
my dying mother out in Oregon, and I got an OMMA
card, Oregon Marijuana Medical Act card. And I'm
telling you that when I take pot out there --
okay? -- this isn't an anecdote to me. I don't
need this crap. I don't have to have its
constipation. I don't have to have its
hallucinations. I don't have to wait for it to
kick in. I don't have to puke on it. Okay?
And when I do really have to have the
big hammers, if I'm smoking pot, I need a whole lot
100
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
less of it. If I would compare pot to any drug
that you have that's legal, it's not a direct
comparison because the stuff you've got has an LD50
that's far worse because marijuana doesn't have a
bad LD50. Doesn't exist. Okay? It's like
Vistaril. Okay? It's not Vistaril, but if I'm
trying to give you an analogy that you can
understand, it's like Vistaril. It's an enhancer.
If I take morphine or an opiate like the oxycodone,
I need way less of it to accomplish the same
effect.
Let me see if I can back over here and
stay on task. I am severely ill because I've been
in at least three, maybe four bad traffic
accidents. I have six fused vertebrae, two
Harrington rods, four blown disks in my cervical
spine, and by -- God alone knows how many CTs.
I've been diagnosed with multiple TBIs. That's
traumatic brain injuries, which I've had portions
of my brain jellied in these traffic accidents.
Not fun.
I have been arrested, probated, fined,
had my license yanked. Let's see. What else did
they do to me? Oh, yeah. I had a presentence
investigation recommend that I go to prison over
101
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
this. Thanks a whole lot because I want to stop
puking.
I had three pot plants in my closet.
Okay? Who am I threatening with that? Nobody.
Not you, not you. Nobody. I'm trying to stop
puking. That's what I do a lot of.
Compazine and Phenergan do not work as
well as cannabis. They're your big hammers. Okay?
I'm forced to go out on the street and buy impure
pot. This is not a joke. God knows what kind of
shit they put on this stuff, but it's bad. Okay?
These are the same people that deal
coke, methamphetamine, PCP. I've seen it all.
I've seen it. Okay? I don't need to be forced to
go around these people. I'm furious at this.
I want to tell you a little witness
about the effect on pain that smoked cannabis has
for me. I know what pain is. I can write you a
book on it. Okay? I'm filled with burning fire
balls right now while I stand in front of you
whacked on oxycodone. Okay? Because that's what I
am. I'm a junkie. I'm a medical junkie, and I'm
mad about it, and I want it stopped.
My experience with smoked cannabis out
in Oregon is I really cut -- not only cut it back,
102
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
there were days when I didn't take any of it at
all. So don't tell me that it doesn't have medical effect. I'm telling
you it does.
I want this constipation stopped too.
These drugs and other drugs that I take to control
hypercholesterolemia cause vicious amounts of
constipation. I can't take suppositories to
control my nausea. What am I going to take?
Compazine? It takes 45 minutes to kick in. You
try and have your face hanging in the sink or the
stool puking and wait 45 minutes. You can't
swallow a pill. You can't shove one where the sun
doesn't shine. But if I take pot, in five
seconds -- in five seconds it cuts the nausea in
half, bam, like that. And I'm not an anecdote.
I'm telling you this stuff works. I don't know
what kind of scientific studies you need.
If I eat pot the night before, it's
totally worn off. I can't use oral dosing to
protect me in the morning or in the middle of the
night. Smoked cannabis works for me. I never see
pink elephants on this stuff. I never ever had a
drug hangover. I never hallucinate like I have on
the morphine. My God, have I hallucinated on
morphine. I've had big doses of morphine.
103
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
I need your help, Board of Pharmacy
members. I'm not here to ask you to get me high.
You can't get me high on cannabis. I'm a junkie.
Okay? I take big opiates. We don't get high on
cannabis. Doesn't work like that. I get the big
stuff.
Yeah, they all have negative side
effects. You know, the negative side effects that
I get out of cannabis is your fear. Your fear
really is a negative side effect. I want to talk
about your fear for a minute and why some of it's
legitimate and some of it's very unlegitimate.
All these drug laws that that nice
lady that was just ahead of me was speaking about,
they don't just feed pension seekers like that
swine Harry Anslinger. Okay? They're
self-perpetuating, and there are big agencies that
make money on this. We of the cannabis community
are very aware of this. We have to be. It's
crushed into us. We don't get away from it. It's
so hard to stay on focus here because my notes
aren't the greatest.
Yeah. The drug laws were made because
we had a lot -- in 1900, for example, by noon your
third grade teacher was whacked. There was a big
104
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
chance of that. We really did have a drug problem.
We had a severe alcohol problem. We went through
multiple prohibitions. That's plural. Okay? They
won't work. We've had to repeal them before, and
we need to repeal this one. It doesn't work.
What are you going to do to me? You
going to put me in jail? The next time the
presentence investigation isn't going to just say
"We need to put him in prison for five years."
They're going to hang what's commonly known as
little bitch on me. That's a 15-piece chicken
dinner for my family to eat, folks. This ain't a
joke to me. I'm not laughing. I don't think this
is funny. I need your help. I'm serious.
I am disgusted and armed with fiery
pain and puking by rabid haters who are totally
unscientific pension seekers in our government. I
want Iowa medical laws that protect me from such
unscientific self-servers. They're not helping
your state.
I want to tell you a little story
about pharmacy in my family. In 1965 I was about
12 years old, and my grandmother had me out in her
farm yard, and my grandmother is dead now, God
bless her. In her life I never saw her drink
105
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
alcohol, never saw her touch pot, never heard her
swear. Okay? She had me out in the front yard
teaching me herbology for real.
When she was a young mother, like in
1900, Penicillin was 45 years away from being
invented -- 40 years away from being invented.
Doctors around there would kill you easier than
just letting whatever it was chew you up. They had
no idea what bacteria were. Okay? She was the
Board of Pharmacy.
She told me stories about how one of
her kids, my uncle, dropped out of a tree and did
what I suspect is split one of his kidneys and die
in her arms screaming at her to rub his legs.
Okay? To her herbology was real, and she taught me
about this in her yard, and she showed me the
thistles and the milkseeds, and she really liked
the dandelions, and growing up against the side of
the house, folks, guess what it was? A piece of
Iowa. It was indigenous cannabis.
And she pointed out that plant to me,
and she said, and I remember this well, "That's for
women troubles, migraines, and the pukes. You make
a tea out of it."
Indigenous cannabis is more Iowan than
106
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
anybody in this room. It's been around for
thousands of centuries. Everybody here that's come
up and witnessed you that it doesn't hurt you is
right. Indigenous cannabis is a part of our
state's life. It evolved as a piece of Iowa. It's
us, folks. It's why you have CBD receptors in your
brains. Human beings have been eating and smoking
cannabis for centuries and millennia as pregnant
mommies eating it. It doesn't hurt little kids.
I'm sorry. I hope that doesn't offend you, but if
you think it does hurt mommies, you need to get
educated. It doesn't do a bad deal on Apgar scores
at all. You need to get with it and find out.
That's on your responsibility.
We need to get rid of laws that send
the wrong messages to kids too because I'm not
going to stop using pot. I tell everybody I can
about how it helps me because I'm sick and that it
stops the pain. Can I have another couple minutes,
please? I'm almost there. Thank you. I
appreciate that.
If anyone should demonstrate reduced
immune function -- I want to talk about that
briefly -- reduced immune function from pot, it
should well be exhibited in me. I have thyroid
107
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
cancer, and how many times have I heard my mom, my
wife, everybody tell me before I was diagnosed "You
can't be sick that often. You're a fake. You just
don't want to work. You're lazy. You're this." I
was dying of cancer right in front of them. They
didn't know it. Okay?
The first time I was blood tested by
the surgeon, I was 295 times normal TSH values. I
was really sick, folks. When you can't metabolize
oxygen, you're lazy. Okay?
If anyone can demonstrate reduced
immune function, it would be me. Pot doesn't hurt
my immune function. Doesn't hurt my lungs. Okay?
It doesn't cause me to catch bronchitis or
pneumonia any differently when I smoke pot and when
I do not smoke it. HIV patients are also examples.
I urge you to stop fault-finding.
It's not science. It's fake science, and it's
going to produce politically warped science. Don't
fault-find us. Listen to us. Almost there, folks.
I have just one other thing to
mention. I have an active OMMA card, and I'm here.
Why am I here? Because I love Iowa. I'm an Iowan.
My people live here. I was born here. Don't make
me leave because I don't want to be sick.
108
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
God bless you, Carl Olsen. Thank you
for exposing these people to me.
LLOYD JESSEN: Do we have a
Dr. Bradford Stiles? Dr. Stiles? Thank you.
BRADFORD STILES: Hi.
How you doing?
As I said, I'm Brad Stiles. I have a dental
practice here in Iowa City.
BRADFORD STILES: Okay.
Sorry. I'm a
dentist here in Iowa City. I've had a dental
practice since -- been about 25 years now. And my
reason for coming is that I -- I get -- completely
different approach than what -- you know, he's
actually somebody who's benefiting from the use of
cannabis for his illness. Mine was more of a
scientific reason when I was looking into some
different things once I heard about an article
which I made copies of for you guys.
Basically I started researching it,
and I looked into it, and cannabis is -- many
people probably already said it but been around for
about 3,000 -- at least 3,000 years, documented as
a therapeutic agent for many different reasons. It
wasn't until then-President Nixon decided to
109
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
classify it as a Schedule I narcotic, and the
status was given by President Nixon because of
No. 1, high potential for abuse; 2, unsafe use even
under medical supervision; and 3 was lacking
current accepted medical uses.
So I wanted to talk about each one of
these because I don't think any of them are true.
And the first one is the high potential for abuse.
Okay? In society we've got to stop looking for
abuse. People have a potential to abuse things.
That's what it is. It has nothing to do with the
substance. I mean or the -- or the thing.
I mean look at food. We all need food
to live. If you abuse it, you become obese.
That's not good. Okay? Cell phones, if I'm broken
down in the middle of nowhere or I need to find
somebody and I'm lost, they're great. But when
people are driving 70 miles an hour, they're
terrible. When they're abusing them, they're not
any good. Okay?
One that probably I don't think
anybody in here would argue that computers have
really made a big difference in medicine. Okay?
110
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
Between diagnosis, decoding the human genome, it
has a tremendous impact on medicine with research,
people being able to collaborate across -- all
around the world with computers.
However, if any of you have any
teenagers or college-age kids, you can see
computers can be abused. MySpace is a perfect
example. People are on it 24/7. They barely sleep
if they're on it. You've got porn on the Internet.
Does it mean the computers have a high potential
for abuse, so we should make them illegal? I mean
that's the same type of reasoning.
We're taking something that has
potential for good as good medicine, and because
there are some people that are going to abuse it,
it becomes -- you know, it becomes a Schedule I
because of potential for abuse.
How come, you know, like cannabis,
sure like any other medication that have sedative
hypnotic effects, side effects, they have a
potential for abuse by people who abuse things.
However, that doesn't mean it shouldn't be used as
a therapeutic agent.
OxyContin, Demerol, Percocet,
Adderall, Ritalin, Valium, just to name a few, all
111
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
have tremendous abuse potential if you want to look
at abuse potential of a medication. They're none
of them are Schedule 1. So why is cannabis
Schedule I? It doesn't make any sense. Okay?
The second thing was that there's
no -- that it's unsafe for use even by medical
supervision -- under medical supervision. That was
the second category for putting it in Schedule I in
the first place.
In -- in this last month, September of
'09, Journal of Opioid Management, University of
Washington researcher Sunil Aggarwal, something
like that, looked at 33 controlled clinical trials
that are published from 1971 to 2009 -- and I'm
going to be able to give you guys all the
references too if you want. And the conclusion was
that marijuana is safe, effective medicine for
specific medical conditions.
In 2008 approximately 7,000 American
physicians prescribed medical cannabis to over
400,000 patients, and the conclusion is that
cannabis is extremely safe with minimal toxicity.
The U.S. Government spent billions of
dollars in funding research to find evidence to
support that cannabis is toxic over the last
112
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
40 years. No such evidence has been found.
The U.S. Government published reports
in the 1970s by the Drug Awareness Warning Network,
the abbreviation DAWN. Based on their statistical
data on drug use and morbidity, there's never been
a reported death from cannabis.
American Medical Association concluded
after reviewing all the available research
literature that they -- well, whatever they looked
at. I don't know if it was all of it but in the
early 1990s, and they said -- their conclusion was
that no drug or herb studied has marijuana's safety
record and suggested legalization to the
then President George Bush the first. However, he
decided to ignore it, again, because of political
things, as the last gentleman mentioned.
Dr. Steven Sidney published in April
of 1999, he looked at the death rate of cannabis
users, looked at 65,000 cannabis users and a death
rate, and he found no statistically significant
association between cannabis and morbidity and
concluded that if it doesn't increase the death
rate, it can't be very harmful. Okay. So so much
for the idea of unsafe for use even under medical
supervision. Okay?
113
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
And then the lacking medical uses.
This is what we got me into it in the first place
was when I read this article because I have a lot
of cancer in my family, and you've heard from a lot
of people, I'm sure, about the therapeutic uses in
chronic pain, in terminal diseases, chemotherapy,
et cetera, but I'm looking at independent studies
that looked at the relationship of cannabis and
head and neck squamous cell carcinoma, and they
found published in the Journal of Cancer Prevention
Research August 2009 -- that's what I have copies
of for you, and I can give you the other ones.
These studies came out of Brown
University, Providence University, Boston
University, LSU, and University of Minnesota, so
it's not like one person might be, you know,
gaining something from this. There's a lot of very
astute researchers from all these different
institutions all looked at it, and they looked at
head and neck squamous cell carcinoma rate in
chronic cannabis users, and the conclusion and of
course the study -- that and a number of studies
funded by the U.S. Government were to try to find
that there was a positive link between cannabis and
cancer.
114
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
And what they actually found was that
moderate use of cannabis significantly reduced --
reduced the incidence of all types of head and neck
cancer as well as other cancers of the respiratory
tract and the GI tract. So not only didn't it
cause it, it reduces it. It has an inverse
relationship. Okay? An inhibitory effect on
cancer cells. Okay?
Smoking moderate amounts of cannabis
had significantly reduced the incidence of all the
cancer studies, so they checked a lot of different
types of cancer, and when compared to noncannabis
users, it even had a decrease in cancer of various
types in people that were already in high-risk
categories, so they already drink, and they already
smoked tobacco. So they're already high risk for
cancer.
If they also happen to be moderate
cannabis users, their incidence of cancer is
significantly less than somebody who wasn't a
moderate cannabis user. It doesn't make any sense.
Our government is withholding medicagtion that could
be preventing us from getting cancer.
Am I saying that everybody should be
smoking pot all the time? No. But I'm saying if
115
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
you have somebody that has cancer and you've got a
medication that helps them get over their nausea,
helps them with all their other things that they're
dealing with and on top of it has an anticancer
effect, it doesn't make any sense that it's -- that
it's put in a category where it says that it has no
medical uses. Okay? That doesn't make sense to
me.
This -- and I was surprised by that,
reading that, and therefore got the article out,
but I was even probably more surprised or
dumbfounded by the fact that the same study was
done by Donald Tashkin at UCLA in 2006, so this
is -- here I thought I had new evidence for you,
and it's three years old, and this was funded by
the U.S. -- National Institute of Health, and in
their separate study they found the same thing,
that there was reverse relationship with cannabis
use and cancer.
So there's a number of different
things. And Dr. Tashkin actually has a mechanism
that he thinks happens because the THC in the
cannabis kills off old and aging cells, and those
cells are the same ones that tend to become
cancerous. So therefore, by killing off the cells,
116
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
it's the body's way of cleansing -- or the cannabis
is enabling the body to cleanse out cells that
would later become malignant.
And that's it, short and sweet. I'll
send the references for all the other ones too.
TERRY MITCHELL: My name is Terry
Mitchell. And I don't know where to start. I've
listened to these other people, and heck, all I've
got is degenerative disk disease in three disks.
Has a tendency to not let me stand up
straight and buckle my knees every once in a while
when it stabs me. But when I was smoking a little
bit of cannabis, not getting high, mind you, just
like you'd take a doctor's prescription, three,
four times a day, I smoked two or three hits, put
the thing down, and go on about my business, two or
three four times a day depending on what I was
doing that day, how much I strained my back.
I can work. I don't need this thing
(indicating). To -- there's many people out there
that actually need cannabis. The old boy that grew