If you’ve been following along, you’ll know that when the Iowa Board of Pharmacy recommended rescheduling marijuana in 2010, the chair of the Iowa House Committee on Public Safety, Greenfield Republican, Representative Clel Baudler, filed his own bill in 2011 opposing the Iowa Board of Pharmacy, H.F. 183 (by the Committee on Public Safety), formerly H.S.B. 4 (by Representative Baudler). At the time, Baudler stated, “I still do not understand the board of pharmacy’s decision to support medical marijuana and I sure as hell don’t agree with it.” Representative Baudler’s bill died in committee but was reborn again in 2013 as H.F. 168 (by the Committee on Public Safety), formerly H.S.B. 52 (by the Governor’s Office of Drug Control Policy). The Office of Drug Control Policy’s bill, guided through the Iowa House of Representatives by Chairman Baudler, passed in the Iowa House in 2013 but died in subcommittee in the Iowa Senate Committee on the Judiciary in 2014.
What happened to Chairman Baudler in 2014 was nothing short of a miracle. Parents of children with epilepsy gave Chairman Baudler an epiphany. Chairman Baudler became the champion of a marijuana extract law that was later signed by Iowa Governor Branstad on May 30, 2014, S.F. 2360. At an interim study committee conducted by a bipartisan group of Iowa senators and representatives on September 11, 2014, Chairman Baudler was the single Republican to vote for growing marijuana in Iowa to make the marijuana extract, and was one of four Republicans to vote for rescheduling marijuana. All five Democrats on the committee voted for both proposals. But, the moral of the story here is that opinions change in the blink of an eye.
Another story is the Office of Drug Control Policy, which is an executive branch agency with no authority to recommend, or oppose, scheduling. The Iowa Board of Pharmacy is the sole executive branch agency responsible for recommending scheduling to the Iowa Legislature. It’s a violation of the executive branch’s constitutional duty to faithfully execute the laws to send one executive branch agency to oppose another executive branch agency when one of them is authorized by the Legislature and the other is not. The Office of Drug Control Policy has seen it’s funding reduced over the past few years, and deservedly so. This agency should be abolished by the Iowa Legislature for failure to honor the Constitution of Iowa.
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