House File 732 (Medical Cannabidiol)

House File 732 is on the Dai­ly House Debate Cal­en­dar for Tues­day, March 26, 2019.

The fol­low­ing state­ment of con­sis­ten­cy with fed­er­al law is includ­ed in Sen­ate Med­ical Cannabid­i­ol bill, SF 501, on page 5 at lines 19 through 23.

Please add the same lan­guage to HF 732.

House File 732
1	Amend File 732 as fol­lows:
2	1.  Page 2, after line 18 by insert­ing:
3	<Sec. ___.  NEW SECTION.  124E.20  Fed­er­al reg­u­la­tions not
4	applic­a­ble.
5	Notwith­stand­ing any fed­er­al reg­u­la­tion to the con­trary, the
6	use of med­ical cannabid­i­ol pur­suant to this chap­ter is not
7	sub­ject to fed­er­al reg­u­la­tion.>
8	2.  By renum­ber­ing as nec­es­sary.

It is crit­i­cal­ly impor­tant that this state­ment of leg­isla­tive intent be includ­ed in our state law.  State leg­is­la­tors fre­quent­ly say that the Iowa Med­ical Cannabid­i­ol Act autho­rizes vio­la­tion of fed­er­al law, includ­ing leg­is­la­tors who vot­ed for it (Rep. Lin­da Upmey­er and Rep. John Forbes).  Patients and their care givers should not be stig­ma­tized as crim­i­nals.

The fed­er­al Drug Enforce­ment Admin­is­tra­tion (DEA) reg­u­la­tions exempt the reli­gious use of a fed­er­al sched­ule 1 con­trolled sub­stance, pey­ote.  See, 21 C.F.R. § 1307.31 (2019).  Church­es do not have greater con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­tec­tion than states have.  For the same rea­son the DEA main­tains an exemp­tion for a church, DEA must exempt a state med­ical cannabis pro­gram.  In fact, states actu­al­ly have the right to refuse to rec­og­nize the reli­gious use of pey­ote.  See, Employ­ment Divi­sion v. Smith, 494 U.S. 872 (1990).  We need to declare we have the right to autho­rize med­ical use of cannabis in Iowa and that DEA must include an exemp­tion in Title 21 Sec­tion 1307 of the Code of Fed­er­al Reg­u­la­tions.

On Jan­u­ary 28, a local attor­ney and I peti­tioned the DEA to grant an exemp­tion to fed­er­al reg­u­la­tions for the Iowa Med­ical Cannabid­i­ol pro­gram, Iowa Code Chap­ter 124E (2019), sim­i­lar the one grant­ed to the Native Amer­i­can Church for the reli­gious use of pey­ote.  See 21 C.F.R. § 1307.03 (2019) and 21 C.F.R. § 1307.31 (2019).

Med­ical cannabid­i­ol and pey­ote are both fed­er­al Sched­ule 1 con­trolled sub­stances, as well as Iowa Sched­ule 1 con­trolled sub­stances.  Med­ical cannabid­i­ol is exempt from the Iowa Con­trolled Sub­stances Act when used for med­ical pur­pos­es, Iowa Code § 124E.12(4) (2019).  Pey­ote is exempt from the Iowa Con­trolled Sub­stance Act when used for reli­gious pur­pos­es, Iowa Code § 124.204(8) (2019).  The reli­gious exemp­tion exists because of the con­sti­tu­tion­al guar­an­tee of reli­gious free­dom.  A state med­ical cannabis law is exempt because of the con­sti­tu­tion­al guar­an­tee of state auton­o­my and self-deter­mi­na­tion.  The DEA grants exemp­tions and it must do so even-hand­ed­ly.

The DEA has the author­i­ty to com­plete­ly remove cannabis from the fed­er­al Con­trolled Sub­stances Act with­out any fur­ther autho­riza­tion from Con­gress.  See, 21 U.S.C. § 811(a)(2).  It would be absurd to think the DEA can­not rec­og­nize an exemp­tion for our state med­ical cannabis pro­gram.  The only rea­son we don’t have an exemp­tion is because we didn’t ask for one.

I attend­ed the sub­com­mit­tee hear­ing on House File 733 on March 21, and HF 733 proves beyond any doubt that a state law autho­riz­ing the use of a con­trolled sub­stance must be con­sis­tent with fed­er­al law.  See page 15, lines 11 through 21:

11	2. Noth­ing in this chap­ter shall be con­strued or applied to
12	be in con­flict with any of the fol­low­ing:
13	a. Applic­a­ble fed­er­al law, …