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it in the first place, He put it here for us to
use. And I think medicine had a big, big chunk to
do with that.
Do you know it's the only plant in the
world that contains all the nutrients you need to
sustain life? It tastes like hell, but it's
sustaining of life if that's all you had to eat.
I'm -- I've had several people tell me
"Why don't you pack up and move out to one of the
states where it's legal?" Well, I got a wife, five
kids, seven grandkids, and one great-grandkid. How
many of them am I supposed to drag out there with
me? No. This is where I sit my roots. This is
where I raised my family.
We need your help. I'm like he is.
It really ticks me off that this wasn't done
30 years ago, whenever it was supposed to have been
done. I'm asking you now to pull up the slack, to
give this medicine -- by the way, the only one that
can't kill you, even -- people die from aspirin,
but cannabis ain't never killed nobody unless it
was that kid that got stoned and he was running
from a cop and they shot him in the back. That's
the only way it's ever killed anybody.
I don't have any paper written up or
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anything. I just talk from my heart. And I guess
the last thing that I got to say to you is written
on the back of my shirt. And you got to read it.
ANTHONY HARDEN: Food, clothing,
shelter, fuel, and medicine. It's not just a buzz.
God.
DALE TODD: Well, unfortunately, I
don't have a neat saying on the back of my shirt,
but my name is Dale Todd, and I'm the former chair
of the Iowa Epilepsy Foundation. I serve on the
board of directors at the Iowa-Illinois-Nebraska
Epilepsy Foundation, and I'm vice chair of legal
and public policy for the National Epilepsy
Foundation.
Epilepsy is the largest neurological
disease out there, and we represent hundreds of
thousands of patients across this country. I'm
here because I was asked to be here by people who I
know who use -- use marijuana for assistance with
their seizure control.
In 2005 the National Epilepsy
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Foundation publicly released a statement that is
about their stance on -- on medical use of
marijuana, and I won't read the whole thing, but
I'll just do a paragraph. "In countries where
medical use of marijuana is legal, a number of
people with epilepsy report beneficial effects from
using marijuana, including a decrease in seizure
activity. People who promote the medical use of
marijuana often include treatment of epilepsy in a
long list of disorders for which marijuana is
supposed to be beneficial."
Currently we are advocating for
increased research from the National Institute of
Science. Our epilepsy board, our national board,
is -- it consists of a neurologist, epileptologist,
pharmacist, drug companies, and people who have
been impacted by this -- this deadly disease.
In our upcoming board meeting, we will
be studying this stance that we put together in
2005, and I would suspect not only will we update
it, but it will be a more aggressive and that it
will probably come along the lines of advocating
more for the use of -- the legalized use of
marijuana for patients who have epilepsy.
Pharmacists, somebody who could
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probably tell just as well as I could, the seizure
meds have similar impacts. Characteristics of
opiates and some of the benzos are similar to the
drugs that are found in THC. Those drugs are used
when you have random neuronic excitability, when
you have randomized firing that's not necessarily
controlled.
What we do in those cases with
legalized medication, we -- we mimic the -- the
actions that actually happen in a case, and so what
I would ask you to do is consider this.
You have, and I'm aware of people in
this state who unfortunately are afraid to say who
they are but who use marijuana to help with the
control of their seizure activity, and they are
still productive members of our society, and they
manage to lead a decent life, even though the
quality of their life has been impacted by this
deadly disease.
So thank you for your time. Best of
luck.
CHRIS ANDERSON: Hello.
My name is
Chris Anderson. I don't have anything really
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prepared, but my parents when I was younger, they
were -- well, they were alcoholic, and when I was a
kid, teenager, you know, I smoked pot and stuff,
and they really had a fit about that. They said
"Please, whatever you do, don't smoke the pot.
We'd rather see you drink than smoke."
Like, oh, okay. So drinking is okay.
Smoking is not. So I said "Fine. I'll
drink."
Well, drinking has bought me drunk
driving. I'm a recovering alcoholic of 16 years
now, but during the time that I drank, I was
incarcerated I don't know how many times because
of, you know, what drinking does. It makes me a
whole different person.
Well, anyway, since becoming recovered
and everything and going off of -- being clean, I
found out that I have adult ADD, bipolar. I'm
Type II, which there was a difference between the
two, Type I and Type II, and anxiety disorder, this
and that, which I didn't have when -- when I was
just smoking marijuana and, you know, not drinking.
Well, my doctors know about it. My
psychiatrist and stuff know about it, but when I do
smoke marijuana with the ADD, because they tried me
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on many drugs, and I'm -- I'm on a new drug now for
the ADD. I burned through it so fast, they always
have me on the highest dosage, but with the
marijuana, it slows the thoughts down in my head so
I really can become productive.
Obviously, I cannot -- I don't do it
at work, but if I want to get anything done,
anything done productive at home or whatever, it
does slow everything down so I can have one clear
thought going, and I don't have multiple thoughts
just flying in and out of my head, and -- and with,
like, depression, I have as well, that -- it just
seems to even everything out, and my doctors are
aware of it, and they have no problems with it.
And I don't change as a person when
I -- when I, you know, smoke cannabis or anything.
I -- I am the same person as I always am. My -- I
don't change as I -- as I would on alcohol, which
is legal.
You know, you can drink as much as you
want, get in your car, drive, and nobody is going
to stop you and tell you you can't do it unless,
you know, Officer Friendly stops you and gives you
a ticket and fines you and fines you and fines you,
and you know the vicious circle of that.
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But it just -- to me it's just -- it's
funny how this is such an illegal thing, but yet
two of the most deadly things, alcohol, which you
can kill families with it, kill yourself with it,
and cigarettes, which they're advertising on TV
every day how many millions they kill -- my mother
for one died of lung cancer -- but yet we can keep
selling that as long as we keep taxing it, and
people will pay a higher and higher amount for it.
They're taxing alcohol now. People can still get
it. Just pay a higher amount.
But for the ones that it does do some
good for, we've got to go underground and be
careful and hope that we don't get ourselves in
trouble for trying to find something that is
beneficial to our diseases.
So like I said, I didn't really have
anything down, but as far as the ADD for me, it is
a godsend. And I never had to go see doctors until
I quit -- you know, went to rehab and everything,
quit smoking, everything, drinking, everything and
stuff. Then that's when all the problems start
popping up.
So now I have to go to a shrink, and I
have all these pills I take in the morning to be
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right and at night, you know, this and that. But I
guess that's my thing is why the stuff that they
tell us is so bad, is going to rot your liver out.
You know drinking and driving is bad. They're
going to put you in jail for that. Smoking,
they're telling us they're putting addictive stuff
in there to make you addicted to it. It's going to
kill you.
And marijuana, it's natural. What's
in there is, you know -- and like the man had said
earlier, you know, it has beneficial things in it
and stuff too, but I just know it does me wonders.
to clear our all the things in my head that the
ADD -- and anybody that has it knows all the things
that go on in your head all at one time, and it
does me wonders.
And that's really all I had to say.
Thank you.
LLOYD JESSEN: No. 16? Anyone
here
with No. 16? If not, anyone else in the room that
would like to speak? If not, then we'll take a
break here.
So I was talking about Robert
Lawrence's book, Drug Warriors and Their Prey, and
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I was interrupted, saying that it draws detailed
comparisons of the War on Drug in the United States
today with the events of 1930s Germany that led to
Hitler's Third Reich and the attempted destruction
of the Jewish people.
Miller writes that "authoritarians are
manufacturing and manipulating the public fears
about drug use in order to create a police state
where a much broader agenda of social control can
be implemented using government power. I believe
the War on Drug uses -- I believe the War on Drug
users masks a war on democracy." Therefore, War on
Drugs is presented as a genuine form of
totalitarianism.
Ignorance is power. Power over the
people. Power to dominate minds. Power to make
money off of the suffering of others.
If the phrase "Ignorance is power"
seems familiar, it's also from 1984. This
philosophy, it turns out, is embedded in our
government today. Ignorance is power. The more
the population can be kept ignorant and illiterate,
the more easily they can be controlled by
advertisers, government regulators, and the
so-called authority figures like conventional
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medical doctors.
As illiterates, they are ripe for
exploitation by powerful corporations and
governments. They have no real ability to question
what they're being told or to stand up for their
rights. They have no real ability to question what
they're being told. They have no ability to defend
themselves against campaigns of disinformation
promoted by those in power. People are trained to
be mind slaves to get along in society without
asking too many questions.
The truth is that even really smart
people are mind slaves too because you don't get
through the world of academia by asking lots of
questions. You survive academia by conforming.
You get through medical school and pharmacy school
by swallowing what you're told and shutting down
that part of your brain that used to ask skeptical
questions. People who ask too many questions get
flunked out.
Thus, all the people who become the
top doctors and academics and the leaders in our
nation are by definition conformists. That's how
they are so easily fooled by the disinformation
campaigns waged by big pharma, the FDA, medical
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journals.
The American Medical Association was
one of the few organizations that raised the voice
in opposition to the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937.
Yet today, most physicians seem to take little
active interest in the subject. And their silence
is often cited by those who are determined that
marijuana shall remain forbidden medicine.
It is time for physicians to
acknowledge more openly that the present
clarification is -- that the present classification
is scientifically, legally, and morally wrong. The
few studies that the government drums into the
public mind over and over which claims to show
cannabis is a harmful drug are almost all the work
of the government's top hired gun, Dr. Gabriel Nahas.
The New England Journal of Medicine
described Nahas's work as "psychopharmalogical
assertions." The Journal of the American Medical
Association also condemned his work stating
"Examples of biased selection and omissions of
facts abound in every chapter."
They also point out that the federal
government has conducted only one long-term study
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of medical marijuana, the IND program, that still
provides marijuana to four patients, but it's a
study only in name as "no clinical resopnse data in
the patient cohort has ever been systemically
collected or disseminated."
Translation: If officials don't know
that marijuana is safe, effective medicine, it's
because they don't want to know. The concept of
double-think as described in Orwell's 1984 is being
used effectively by politicians today.
The power of holding two contradictory
beliefs in one's mind simultaneously and accepting
both of them, to tell deliberate lies while
genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact
that becomes inconvenient and then when it becomes
necessary again to draw it back from oblivion for
just as long as it's needed, to deny the existence
of objective reality which one denies, all of
this is indispensably necessary.
By a fresh act of double-think, one
erases this knowledge and so on indefinitely with
the lie always one leap ahead of the truth.
Cannabis is both an effective medicine
and a safe drug, both chemo-preventative and
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therapeutic and generally beneficial to health.
What this shows us most clearly in light of the
consensus to the contrary is the enormous power of
a big lie.
With its vast resources, the
government mainstream media are able to fabricate
and fob off a pharmacological fraud against both
cannabis and the public interest. Through sheer
repetition and consistent suppression of contrary
information, they are able to construct the edifice
of public consensus which even the hardest
scientific facts fail to topple.
The government has greater ability to
distribute the lie than any other sector of
society has to distribute the truth. However, the
testimony of these hearings contain copious
quantities of carefully referenced scientific
fact -- facts that consistently, conclusively
confirm that cannabis is safe; thereby, exploding
the government's big lie. Big pharma is busy
applying for and has already received multiple
patents for marijuana.
This trend was most recently
summarized in a National Institute of Health's
paper. "The endocannabinoid system as an emerging
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target of pharmacotherapy" which concluded "The
growing interest in the cannabis -- the growing
interest in the underlying science has been matched
by a growth in the number of cannabinoid drugs in
pharmaceutical development from two in 1995 to
twenty-seven in 2004."
In other words, at the same time the
American Medical Association is claiming that pot
has no medical value, big pharma is in a frenzy to
bring dozens of new cannabis-based medicines to
market.
Federal law concedes the safety of
industrial hemp by allowing it to be legally
imported for food. It is unfortunate that the
federal government has stood in the way of the
American farmer, including many who are struggling
to make ends meet, competing in the global
industrial hemp market.
Growing a safe and profitable crop on
their own land with the -- are inconsistent with
the constitutional guarantee of a limited,
restrained federal government. To realize the
crime of hemp is that America let a few people in
power bulldoze one of our greatest resources into
nonexistence.
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The very concept of objective truth is
fading out of the world. Lies will pass into
history. During times of universal deceit, telling
the truth becomes a revolutionary act.
I'm in support of marijuana
relegalization. The model would allow any adult
over 18 to grow any -- all the marijuana they would
like without any taxation, regulation, or other
government interference.
It is important to understand that
this absolutely does not preclude the issuance of
commercial licensing or commercial taxation
regulation, but self-cultivation is protected as an
inalienable sacred right.
Such a system would self-regulate the
market without much need for regulation since the
current profit margins would be replaced by normal
profits where an ounce would probably not sell for
more than 100 percent over the cost of growing. In
other words, adults could grow their own marijuana
for free, and commercial growers would have to
compete in a free and open market, a regulated
legal market. Thanks.
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We'll do 15 minutes. Okay? Thank you.
(Short recess.)
LLOYD JESSEN: Do we have Speaker
No. 16? Okay. We can go ahead with you. Thank
you.
(Off-the-record discussion.)
THOMAS O'CONNELL: Hello.
My name is
Thomas O'Connell. I live in Coralville, Iowa, and
I first of all want to thank the Board of Pharmacy
for the opportunity to come in and talk to you
today about medical marijuana and my feelings in
that regard. I won't use my full ten minutes, so
we won't have to worry about that.
Basically it was my understanding of
what we're doing is looking at the medical usage of
marijuana, and I can, you know, talk about some of
the experiences that I've -- that I've noticed.
They basically have to do with pain relief.
At this time I presently do not have
chronic pain, but I do occasionally have acute
pain. As I get older, I assume that chronic pain
will be more of an issue for me, and I'd like to
get this addressed now before I get to the point
where I'm going to have to be able to actually use
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it for chronic purposes.
I'm a little different in that any
type of pain relief that I can use for
over-the-counter medications like aspirin, Tylenol,
Ibuprofen, anything that you can get
over-the-counter, I have an allergic reaction to.
I break out in hives.
Because of that, there's not really a
lot of things that are out there that are available
for me readily to really use for pain relief. So
basically having to kind of go at this on my own,
you know, like with my physician as well. My
physician, you know, has basically prescribed a
codeine cough syrup that I can use for pain relief,
which, you know, is fine, but if by chance I need
something over the course of a weekend, I got to go
to the emergency room. I have to make an
appointment to go get a prescription.
In Iowa City and most places
throughout the Midwest, marijuana is readily
available. I can get that much more readily than I
can by having to go to a pharmacy. What I've
noticed from using it is that I can easily titrate
the relief that I get.
By that, I'm able to -- if I feel like
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I have pain -- and most of my pain really is
associated more with exercise, exertion. If by
chance I have pain, I can -- I can actually take
another puff and basically get myself in a
situation where I don't fele that pain.
So from that standpoint it's been very
good for me because I am able to get the -- I
believe a medical benefit out of it because
everything else is not really readily available for
me because of my allergies.
Actually then I use it primarily in
low dosage, and so -- so in the process of actually
exercising, I can use that to relieve my pain
basically from exertion.
So I guess as you look forward to
making a decision about how the board wants to
continue on with this, please take in mind not only
the evidence that you have seen, you know, through
all the literature that you guys have been
submitted but remember there are people like me
that are out there that actually could use this on
a medical basis.
Is there any questions? If not, thank
you very much.
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DEBBIE JORGENSON: While we're
waiting, if there's anyone who would like to speak,
right outside the door at the tables, there's a gal
by the name of Becky, and you can get a speaker
badge from her.
(Off the record discussion.)
DREW FISCHELS: Hi. My name
is Drew
Fischels, and I just actually found out about this
today, so I don't have anything prepared, but just
sitting here, I had some thought I wrote down.
I'd first like to thank the
pharmaceutical board for listening to these
testimonies today. It's very much appreciated.
This is going to be very short and to the point.
This medicinal marijuana thing, while
it appears to be a very complicated issue, I think
it would be wise to remember that as humans, we
seem to have a propensity to unnecessarily
complicate issues beyond a reasonable story. Now,
while the legalization of medicinal marijuana would
certainly come with a multitude of legal,
regulatory, and cultural wrinkles that would have
to be ironed out, I think it would also be wise to
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step back and look at the moral picture.
We've heard countless testimonies
from people today and past and I'm sure in the future
who are in a lot of pain and have had that pain
relieved by medicinal marijuana.
But I think it is our moral
responsibility to figure out a safe and regulated
way to get this relatively benign, natural medicine
into their hands so their pain can be relieved. I
think, you know, despite all the complications, in
a lot of ways it's just as simple as that with
people who are in a lot of pain right now, right
today, and if this helps them, we need to figure
out a way to get it to them.
So thank you.
LLOYD JESSEN: We will be here
until
7 p.m., but as of right now, I don't think we have
more speakers, do we, Debbie? No.
LLOYD JESSEN: So we'll just take
people as they come, and we will be here until
seven.
(Short recess.)
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NICK MANNA: Just a second.
Good
morning. My name is Nick Manna, N-i-c-k M-a-n-n-a.
I'd like to start off by thanking the pharmacology
board for having this meeting.
I always enjoy coming to meetings, you
know, just for the public to give my thoughts and
whatever. I enjoy going to city council meetings.
I'm a weird person with a lot of free time on my
hands. I work overnights, so I'm free all day and,
you know, don't need a lot of sleep.
I'm not completely swayed one way or
the other on the issue of the medicinal qualities
of medical marijuana. From my cursory and
layperson's review of a readily available Google
search version of medical studies and scientific
studies, I've come to the conclusion that marijuana
should not at least be in Schedule I of the
Controlled Substance Act.
Again, I'm a layperson, and I don't
really have the expertise to be dealing in these
matters. I do, on the other hand, have a
substantial amount of information -- a substantial
amount of expertise in issues of parliamentary
procedures. I'm an official member of the National
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Association of Parliamentarians, and one of the
things that has confused me about this meeting is
the nature of the meeting in itself.
The pharmacology board, in my opinion
as an amateur parliamentarian, is to be an expert
body to provide resources and information to the
public. Expert information. So it confuses me
then when the pharmacology boards makes statements
such as "Well, there was no scientific research
presented at a public hearing."
The pharmacology board's duty by my
interpretation of Iowa Code is to provide that
expert research. When they have not done this, it
is not the public's job to stand in for them and
provide them with scientific research.
I'm also concerned that the fact that
scientific research not being presented to remove
marijuana from the Schedule I of the Controlled
Substance Act is somehow a reason to leave it
there.
My interpretation of the state code
and the Federal Controlled Substance Act is that we
have an affirmative burden of proof in our system
of law. That is to say that the state has
applied -- or that is to say that the State has
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convened a pharmacology board to provide
affirmative recommendation and affirmative evidence
to restrict or control certain substances.
Where this evidence for control does
not exist or has not been presented by the
pharmacology board, the State should remove these
or not schedule these drugs or substances at all.
Because the state pharmacology board
today has not presented such evidence, I am left
only with the conclusion that we should remove it
from the Controlled Substance or the Schedule I.
I'm glad to hear the state board of
pharmacology present evidence, and I'm sure that
there is lots of evidence that marijuana should be
restricted in some light, but I have yet to see it.
Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that
I'm very confused as to why the public is being
held accountable for meeting a certain burden of
proof that in my opinion is not there in the law.
So I urge the state pharmacology board
to use the authority that it has and that it has
used as recently as June, I believe, when they
scheduled -- when they scheduled Tapentadol. I'm
terrible at pronouncing these things. As I said,
I'm a layperson.
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On June 22, the Board of Pharmacy
temporarily investigated Tapentadol, a new
molecular entity with centrally acting analgesic
properties, as a Schedule II controlled substance.
This is their authority, and they have clearly, you
know, some level of evidence that they feel makes
it, you know, legal for them to classify it as
such.
So I'm just a little bit confused when
the state Board of Pharmacy turns to the public,
the lay public, to present evidence to them to
remove it from Schedule I.
Anyway, I urge the state pharmacy
board to do the work they are so good at and that
these people of Iowa trust them with, and I thank
them again for allowing people to have such an
excellent meeting to share their views on this
topic even if I'm a little bit confused as to what
views we're supposed to be sharing.
Thank you.
(Short recess.)
JIM GIERACH: Hi. Good afternoon,
folks. My name is Jim Gierach. I'm an attorney
from the Chicago area. I just came in. I'm
suffering from jet lag a little bit, but I'm here
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to talk about why cannabis should be rescheduled by
the Iowa Board of Pharmacy.
By way of a little bit of background,
I'm a father. I'm a grandfather. I'm an attorney.
I'm a former prosecuting drug attorney from
Chicago. I helped write Illinois's constitution.
I'm the chairman of the church council. I have
never used an illicit drug.
I'm here also on behalf of an
organization called LEAP, Law Enforcement Against
Prohibition, a group of people who have come to the
same conclusion that I have as people in the front
lines of the War on Drugs. That conclusion by
judges, lawyers, prosecutors, former DEA agents,
customs agents, people who are in the front --
front lines of the War on Drugs is that the War on
Drugs doesn't work. It puts more drugs,
contaminated drugs, everywhere. It's the heart of
the drug problem.
Secondly, not only does it not help
with the drug problem, but it's the heart of any
other crisis you can name in America: the problem
of guns, gangs, crime, prisons, taxes, deficits,
AIDS, health care, trade imbalance, corruption, no
money for schools, job programs, the corruption of
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the kids, the corruption of the police, and the
funding of terrorism.
Just to give you an example of how it
doesn't work, I live in Palos Park in southwest
Cook County. Two weeks ago they seized
6,000 marijuana plants after 38 years of drug work.
I did a radio show in Missouri where
they just seized 500 plants. In -- two weeks ago
in another county in Illinois, they seized
500 plants. We have more of these drugs everywhere
now within a mile, 6,000 plants within a mile of my
14-year-old-son.
I'm opposed to drug use, but I'm more
opposed to the War on Drugs, which causes these --
these headaches unending. When I was a prosecutor
in Chicago, the best heroin you could get was
2 percent. After 38 years of drug war, you can now
get 90 percent pure heroin. It's cut with
Fentanyl, often causing respiratory arrest. Why
has it been here for 38 years and continued without
relief? Because the good guys and the bad guys are
both in favor of it.
Al Capone was in favor of the
prohibition of the substance that he peddled
because it was the foundation for the business.
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The same thing is happening with illicit drugs.
Now, the good guys on the other hand,
the people who are building the prisons, the
hundred thousand policemen that we hired to stop
the crime, the prison contractors, the people who
supply the prisons, the TV, radio, and billboard
companies that are getting antidrug money to put up
these drug advertisements, in effect, these people
are all on the same side of the equation.
The guys who make the helicopters to
go spray Columbia, the Round-Up that manufactures
the substance to kill the plants, all of these
things end up with both the good guys and the bad
guys on the same side of the War on Drugs, so
nobody is fighting against it, and we have all
these problems continuing.
Now, I'm here today to suggest to you
that cannabis should be rescheduled. As you know,
it's a Schedule I drug, and it doesn't belong
there. I'm here to try to help the sick and the
dying.
I think the worst aspect of the War on
Drugs is not even all these other problems that
I've mentioned but the heartless, uncompassionate
use of a law to deny people medicine after we've
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got some six centuries of history with the
substance causing people help and aid.
We then have 13 states where the
people themselves can see that the country is so
out of tune that they themselves through their
legislatures and through initiatives are passing
referendums, often 60 percent of the vote or more,
saying that what we're doing is wrong.
We arrest some 900,000 people in this
country a year for marijuana, spending money on
prisons to the point where we can't pay for
schools. It's just absolutely wrong.
Now, I'm sure that you've heard plenty
about the DEA, Judge Francis, 1988, who said that
it would arbitrary, capricious, and unreasonable
to continue with the scheduling of marijuana as a
Class I drug. He was right in 1988, and we're
still struggling to try and right the wrong.
I'm sure that you're aware from having
heard -- this is about the third or fourth time
you've had hearings, I believe. You have heard
testimonials from individual people of how it's
helped MS or glaucoma or -- or tumors on the long
bone. Irving Rosenfeld who I met back in 1992
who's handling millions of dollars of business a
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year on government-supplied marijuana. We have
millions of Americans who have used marijuana and
know that it's not some dread disease.
My father was a judge. End of his
life, he couldn't take his pills anymore. He had
so much pain, he couldn't keep them down. I said
"Dad, you want marijuana?"
And he said "No. I send people to
jail for prison (sic). I'm going to die by the
same rules that I lived by," which he did. I mean
a testament to his character but not a testament to
the rules that we put in place. Julie Falco, a
girl with MS who was on the verge of suicide until
she found medical marijuana.
Peter McWilliams, a best-selling
author who the government prosecutes in one of
these California marijuana raids and says "You're
going to jail unless you stop using your medicine."
He stops using it and chokes to death. Heartless.
We have 13 states who have already
seen the light and approved medical marijuana. We
have 14 more states, Illinois one of them, that's
on the verge. The Illinois Senate passed for the
first time this year medical marijuana. The House
will before the year is out, we expect.
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We have a public consensus. I clipped
something out of the Tribune where they had the
seizure of drugs in a county, Dallas state,
McHenry, and I'm going to leave with you, if I may,
just the comments. The people writing in in
response to the seizure of 450 plants.
"Monumental waste of taxpayer dollars. Complete
waste of time and money. What a waste. What a
waste."
I mean it goes on for pages, every
single one, one after another. Madam Reporter, if
you would please circulate that among your seven
board members.
I would call your attention to the
case of Gonzales where the United States Supremem
Court said that because of the supremacy clause, we
have no choice but to enforce federal drgu law,
notwithstanding referendums and initiatives in the
states that approved marijuana.
The court, so unhappy with its own
decision which he felt -- they felt compelled to
rule as they did, they conclude their opinion,
apologizing in effect for their ruling.
"Respondents in this case seek to avail themselves
of the medical necessity defense. We do not
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address the question. We do note, however, even
more important is the democratic process in which
the voices of voters alive with these respondents
may one day be heard in the halls of Congress and
in the state legislatures."
They had to apologize because they by
the dictates of stare decisis and the need to
follow precedent and not to be an activist court
had no choice but to reach the conclusion that they
did but at the same time imploring all of us to
use our heads to let the states speak through the
legislatures as I hope the Board of Pharmacy will
to the Iowa Board.
It's just essential that we restore
some semblance of sanity in the drug war which has
become the Achilles heel of this country where
we're rotting from the inside because of a rule
that causes disrespect for law and war, police,
society, and one another. I ask you to take the
lead in seeing that those things change.
I'd go on but I got to be near ten.
How am I doing?
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any questions or concerns that you'd like to ask me
about based on -- on 40 years of practicing law and
prosecuting, putting people in jail?
Chicago today, we're having a meeting
with the secretary of education, Arnie Duncan, with
Mayor Daley, with the Attorney General Holder
because the violence is so bad in Chicago, we have
killed 40 children in this current school year. We
have -- we have shot 400 students. We have killed
500 people in the course of the year.
The War on Drugs, I give speeches
around the country at college campuses, at grade
schools, high schools, and more likely grade
schools let me in, and it's the same everywhere.
When I get off the plane or out of the car, I know
the problems in your community. You have more --
more crime than you've ever had. You've got more
drugs than you've ever had. You've got more
overdoses that you've ever had. Your prisons are
expanding. In this state 4,800 people behind bars.
So much money spent there, there's no money left
for education.
Health care, we can't let them have a
clean needle because it will send the wrong
message. So as a result, we have new AIDS cases.
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Well, because of the advancement in the
medicines -- thank you, pharmacology -- they're now
living 24 years on average, and it costs us
$600,000 where it used to be 100,000, and we can't
afford the bills for -- for $600,000 a year for the
lifetime of somebody with AIDS and then give them
no way to prevent the contraction of it.
It is imperative that the states stand
up where the federal government has failed and
implore our national leaders and our local leaders
to end this monstrosity, this albatross, which we
have tied around the neck of our citizens.
You have a great opportunity here in
Iowa through the Board of Pharmacy, through five
pharmacists and two civilian members, to lead that
fight further, to not get lost in the specious
claims that have been made about the horrors.
I had -- I was diagnosed as having
acid reflux, and so the doctor says "Take
omeprazole." I get the thing home, and I read the
thing, says "You might have complications of cough,
dizziness, back pain, headaches, stomach pain,
mental mood change, depression, agitation, chest
pain, irregular heart beat, severe dizziness,
trouble breathing, and if you're on the verge of
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suicide, stop taking it."
I mean you will not -- I mean I didn't
eat the stuff. Once I read the piece of paper, I
said "If my stomach hurts, I'm going to take an
antacid and get some rest, stop worrying about the
drug war for a little bit."
But I mean it's just so foolish. It's
so heartbreaking in so many ways every day. The --
when you -- when you prohibit a substance, you give
up the right to regulate and control it.
In the direction from your legislature
as to what your charge was as the Board of
Pharmacy, you were charged with investigating,
regulating, controlling, recommending. That's what
you can do until you prohibit something. When you
prohibit, you necessarily by definition give up the
right to control and regulate it.
So who controls the drugs right now
and what's on the streets? It's the gangs and the
drug cartels. There's no rules about how old you
have to be to buy it, how old you have to be to
sell it, how strong it is, what it's cut with.
There's no warning label. You don't have to be 21.
These are things that control and
regulation and taxation would enable us to do
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better. I can tell you heartbreaking stories of
clients that have overdosed and killed themselves,
of a relative who just graduated from law school
and overdosed on the way to a job interview on
cocaine, not knowing what he had in the stupid
drug.
I mean we have one heroin overdose
death every day in the city of Chicago. We had ten
ambulances collected on the west side of the city
picking up the bodies because they had cut the drug
with Fentanyl, and then -- then I have to tell you
all my medical stuff. Everything is confidential.
I have a -- what do you call it? An
endoscope, I'll call it, and when I get the bill,
aside from the bill being ridiculous, demanding
health care, $6,000 for a couple hours or
something, they had Fentanyl as one of the drugs
that they used to put me out, now knowing that
that's how they killed all these people on the west
side.
Well, I mean I don't want to overstay
my welcome but --
JIM GIERACH: The town -- the town
next to where I live is called Orland Park, and
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it's one of the upper-scale communities in
southwest Cook County. And I live there. My
daughter who's an alum from here and now a lawyer
in health care, the think tank of D.C., that town
had kids who went to the same high school my
daughter did, end up robbing another house that had
marijuana to steal the cash and the marijuana. And
so we ended up with three Orland Park residents
killing another, shooting two all together, over
this wonderful cannabis product.
I mean we have to wake up as a nation.
Medical marijuana is the very, very least that we
can do to help people who are sick, dying,
suffering, and need help. And who better to lead
us than people who believe in science instead of
this whole notion of -- of using -- using people's
fears as a way to collect votes.
Every president from Nixon forward has
been in favor of the War on Drugs, but because
they're a politician, it's a way to collect votes.
"I'm going to save your children from drugs." I
want my children saved, but it doesn't save them.
It makes it worse.
So I also read this bill. It's a
wonderful -- is this the bill that you're working
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from? It's sort of a base?
LLOYD JESSEN: It's the one that
was
introduced last year, but it's not -- it's not
anything --
JIM GIERACH: Okay. Well,
it's in the
ballpark. In Illinois what they're passing,
they're talking about six plants or two ounces, and
here you're talking about six ounces within a
30-day period.
There's things in here about zoning.
There's -- I mean it's really -- really not a bad
draft for somebody getting started and trying to do
something that regulates something with thought and
moderation.
So I congratulate you for what you're
doing. I hope you're getting testimonials one
after another, and you certainly know far more than
I do about pharmacology.
I come here basically from the
perspective of what is happening to our society
because what we're doing and that we have to care
about one another, and we have to provide medicine
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when somebody can get help from something, even
though Congress legislatively declared this has no
medicinal value. Give them medicine. Thank you.
(Short recess.)
CASEY CORT: My name is Casey Cort,
and I live in Iowa City. In April of 2008 I was
diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma, classic type,
lymphocyte-rich subtype, and as part of my
treatment, I was recommended to have a six-month
course of chemotherapy which involved a regimen
called ABVD, a pretty toxic regimen, and on top of
that, I was given an experimental drug called
Rituxan.
Now, to mitigate the side effects, one
of the -- one of the side effects of the treatment,
of course, is nausea, and I would be incapacitated
for four days after my -- each treatment. My
treatments lasted for six months, every two weeks.
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It was on Thursday. I'd be incapacitated until
Sunday.
For -- to mitigate the side effects,
they would give me -- we started off with
Dexamethasone which is also Decadron, Lorazapam or
Ativan, odansetron, which is called Zofran which
can cost $20 a pill if you don't have insurance,
and also Prochlorperazine which is Compazine.
None of these drugs worked for me. I
was absolutely incapacitated. I would come home,
and all I would be able to do would be to lie on
the couch or the bed for four days until people I
knew that were also going through chemotherapy
recommended that I use medical marijuana.
And I did try that, and within five
minutes of coming home from my chemotherapy
session, I would be up and able to actually resume
my life. Five minutes.
So I'm done with my treatments now. I
stopped using medical marijuana, but I encourage
the board to reclassify this drug that can help so
many people. Thank you.
(Short recess.)
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Beaver, and I live in North Liberty, and I do
believe in the medical use of marijuana, and my
husband and I have both used medical marijuana in
the past. It was illegal, and we were arrested for
it.
We grew some plants for our own
personal use, and that was the problem with it. We
did have a lot of medical and health problems,
which is why we probably did not end up -- we would
still be in prison to this day if they had
prosecuted us to what the penalties would have
been.
My husband, Richard, is a disabled --
hundred percent disabled from Vietnam. A lot of
his illnesses and health problems stem from his
time there. He has a lot of digestive and colon
problems, and he used it to help have an appetite
so he even wants to eat, and he's still very thin,
but it does help his appetite, helps with nausea
when he's sick and doesn't feel well.
For myself, I have a lot of chronic
back pain, and I have some health issues with
migraines. I now know I have what's called
cervical dystonia, which is a type of muscle
spasm, and I think a lot of my health problems I