Ship of State (fools)

On Novem­ber 17, 2014, the Iowa Board of Phar­ma­cy held a pub­lic hear­ing on my peti­tion to have mar­i­jua­na removed from sched­ule 1 of the Iowa Uni­form Con­trolled Sub­stances Act.  Dale Wool­ery from the Governor’s Office of Drug Con­trol Pol­i­cy (ODCP), showed up to argue against me.

Wool­ery takes full advan­tage of the fact that most peo­ple, includ­ing most leg­is­la­tors, don’t under­stand sched­ul­ing of con­trolled sub­stances.  Wool­ery makes his argu­ments as if resched­ul­ing is the same thing as legal­iza­tion.

Wool­ery start­ed off by say­ing the Food and Drug Admin­is­tra­tion (FDA) has not approved smoked mar­i­jua­na, and that none of the nation­al health orga­ni­za­tions sup­port smoked mar­i­jua­na as a method of deliv­ery for med­ical use.  My peti­tion does not ask for the legal­iza­tion of smoked mar­i­jua­na, or any oth­er form of mar­i­jua­na.  Remov­ing mar­i­jua­na from sched­ule 1 would not make it legal for any­thing here in Iowa.

Wool­ery goes on to claim that ODCP sup­ports devel­op­ment of safe, test­ed and effec­tive research-dri­ven mar­i­jua­na-based med­i­cines (non-smoke­able plant deriv­a­tives), but fails to men­tion that none of the plants we cur­rent­ly use to make med­i­cine are in sched­ule 1.  The opi­um plant, from which mor­phine is made, is in sched­ule 2.  The coca plant, from which cocaine is made, is in sched­ule 2.  Sched­ule 1 is only for plants that have no med­ical use.  You can’t make mar­i­jua­na-based med­i­cines from a plant that has no med­ical use.

Wool­ery then says he approves of cannabid­i­ol oil, or CBD, because it’s derived from mar­i­jua­na instead of smoked and that Iowa is one of 11 states enact­ing a CBD-only law this year, fail­ing to men­tion that this oil hasn’t been test­ed or approved by the FDA.  Wool­ery says allowance for CBD is being dis­cussed at the fed­er­al lev­el by some in Con­gress, but not by the FDA.  How did the FDA sud­den­ly become irrel­e­vant?

Wool­ery then says we have Mari­nol, but fails to men­tion that Mari­nol is made syn­thet­i­cal­ly because it can’t be made from mar­i­jua­na.  Wool­ery also men­tions Sativex and Epid­i­olex, which are both made from mar­i­jua­na and cur­rent­ly under­go­ing FDA approval process­es, but those plant deriv­a­tives are made in Great Britain because the mar­i­jua­na can’t be grown for med­ical use here in the Unit­ed States.

Final­ly, Wool­ery con­cludes down-sched­ul­ing mar­i­jua­na would send a dan­ger­ous mes­sage that this addic­tive drug is some­how rel­a­tive­ly safe, fail­ing to men­tion that plants are not drugs and drugs can­not be made from plants in sched­ule 1.  Rel­a­tive­ly safe?  Real­ly?  Rel­a­tive to what?  Sched­ule 2 is where we find opi­um and coca plants.  Is Wool­ery jok­ing?  Wool­ery thinks that plac­ing mar­i­jua­na in the same cat­e­go­ry as mor­phine and cocaine sends a mes­sage that mar­i­jua­na is safe?  Maybe that explains why we have a pre­scrip­tion drug abuse prob­lem in Iowa, but that’s anoth­er sto­ry.