I have filed four petitions for marijuana rescheduling with the Iowa Board of Pharmacy (2008, 2012, 2013, and 2014), two without any scientific or medical evidence (2008 and 2014), and two with scientific and medical evidence (2012 and 2013). I won the two that did not include any scientific or medical evidence, proving that I am not qualified to present scientific or medical evidence and proving that my legal arguments are solid enough to provoke action by the board without any scientific or medical evidence. The reason for this appears to be simple. The board does not need my assistance in finding scientific and medical information on marijuana.
One of my concerns is that the board never issued any explanation for it’s ruling in 2010, and now they admit nobody understood it. I’ve asked if they will put a little more substance into it this time.
February 17, 2010 (Scott Galenbeck was the board’s attorney and Vern Benjamin was the board’s chair)
SCOTT GALENBECK: Vern, I have a question. Do you have any interest in doing some explanation of why, I mean articulating in a document that would go to the legislature your reasons or your thinking. I know that’s a lot of work, but…
VERNON BENJAMIN: Well, I was thinking that when we were doing, when I said we as a board then could talk and give… But, yeah.
March 3, 2010 (Carl Olsen was the petitioner and Lloyd Jessen was the board’s executive director)
CARL OLSEN: Do you have any idea when the Iowa Board of Pharmacy will issue its written explanation of how it arrived at its conclusions on February 17th?
LLOYD JESSEN: The Board has not set a time for the release of a written explanation.
August 27, 2010 (Ed Maier is the current board chair)
ED MAIER: I think it’s important, whatever we do, that we have a solid cut message that the people understand. Last time, we were totally misunderstood, exactly what was happening.
To be fair to all involved, look at the time line of events.
My argument has always been that schedule I, both state and federal, interferes with the implementation of state medical marijuana laws.
As of July 1, 2014, Iowa is now one of those states with a medical marijuana law.
I filed my current petition on July 7, 2014.
So, that should explain why I was able to walk in on Wednesday and get a unanimous ruling granting my petition.
It also explains why the board had a hard time explaining what they were doing in 2010.
Remember, I never asked them to recommend a medical cannabis program like New Mexico, or any program.
The only thing I asked them for in 2008 was to initiate the process to remove marijuana from schedule I.
Obviously, the board thought it would make sense to recommend a state program to explain why they wanted to remove marijuana from schedule I.
But, that made everything more complicated.
Now, it’s simple. We have a state medical marijuana law and both state and federal schedule I interfere with its implementation.
I want the state of Iowa to help me get federal scheduling changed.
This might apply in different contexts as well. For example, when someone tries to challenge scheduling in a criminal case, the court will usually say the defendant had administrative remedies available and did not exhaust those administrative remedies prior to getting arrested. But, here in Iowa, we have not only exhausted those administrative remedies, we’ve won a ruling in our favor at the administrative level. I am following a federal case that seems to break this rule about exhausting administrative remedies, called United States v. Schweder, et al., No. 2:11-cr-00449-KJM-16 (Eastern District of California). If you’re not familiar with it, I have all the documents at http://www.iowamedicalmarijuana.org/States/California.aspx