April Ankeny Legislative Forum

Audio from April 11, 2015

MODERATOR: Sir.

CARL OLSEN: Yes, Senator Whitver, can you tell me how you’re going to vote on the medical cannabis program and what we might need to do to get the House to adopt that?

SENATOR JACK WHITVER: The current bill as is that greatly, in my opinion, greatly expands what we did last year, I would not be supportive of at this time. I’m more interested, I think there’s a right way… The last year we passed a bill that said the state of Iowa believes marijuana has medicinal value. If that is true, and that’s what we think as a state, I think there is a proper way to do it going forward. So, moving from schedule 1 to schedule 2, something like that would be of much more interest to me than just blowing open that code chapter. It’s important to me that whatever we do with medical marijuana is tested and we have the research behind it. And right now that bill, I don’t think it gives us that opportunity to do that. So, I just think there is a process to go through that we need to go through. It’s not as fast as a lot of people that are advocating for it would like, but I thinks it’s our role to do it the right way.

CARL OLSEN: Is there any chance of fixing it before it goes to the House?

SENATOR JACK WHITVER: It depends. It was supposed to go for a vote Wednesday. It didn’t, so I don’t know when it’s going to come up. It could be Monday, I guess it could be Tuesday. We’re working on it, but I don’t know if it can be changed to the point where I can vote for it.

REPRESENTATIVE JOHN LANDON: We were promised in the House when this bill passed last year at 2 o’clock in the morning on the last day that we would have time to run a test from the University of Iowa, that we would have absolutely scientific evidence and results before we were ever asked to expand or do anything with it again. And I don’t know how this request before the test has even gotten its legs under it honors that promise that we were made in the House. So, I would tell you that I’m very interested in that test and the scientific data behind it to make sure. And I would like to see it done through pharmacies where a prescription can be made to an individual and they can go get what they absolutely know is the right level of medication. And I’ll give you an example, today if you go to the pharmacy you can buy certain levels of maybe ibuprofen, you know what’s in an aspirin, you know for sure. But you don’t know that with cannabis oil because there’s no standards for manufacturing. The process is undefined and before that happens I think there’s a lot of things that need to be put into place for that. And so, for us just to prove whatever, who’s going to be responsible for unintended consequences if things happen that aren’t medically proven yet? And that’s the question that we all deal with and I don’t for a second want anyone to suffer for any reason. But I do think that sometimes we look at issue like this and we can do more harm than we can good for folks. We want to make sure that every step that we’re taking helps people and is the right thing to do.

CARL OLSEN: How do you explain twenty-three states moving ahead with something like that?

REPRESENTATIVE JOHN LANDON: You know I can’t explain Washington DC.