Rescheduling’s Biggest Opponent Reverses Position

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baudlerIf 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.