Opening Statement — Nov 14, 2025

Good morn­ing your hon­or.

Good morn­ing coun­sel.

The State has not met its bur­den of demon­strat­ing a com­pelling inter­est in pro­hibit­ing the Petitioner’s pos­ses­sion of cannabis for reli­gious use.

The State has the bur­den under the Iowa Reli­gious Free­dom Restora­tion Act to show the Petitioner’s pos­ses­sion of cannabis for reli­gious use is a threat to pub­lic health and safe­ty suf­fi­cient to jus­ti­fy depriv­ing the Petitioner’s First Amend­ment reli­gious free­dom.

The State com­plains the Peti­tion­er has been peace­ful­ly protest­ing for the past 40 years instead of being arrest­ed again, but that only proves the Peti­tion­er is not a threat to pub­lic health and safe­ty.

The State’s Resis­tance ignores a 15-year chunk of time between 2009 and 2024 where it has enact­ed a fed­er­al rack­e­teer­ing scheme to pro­vide the Petitioner’s sacra­ment to suf­fer­ing Iowans with­out a pre­scrip­tion.  The State’s pro­gram is con­trary to Sched­ule 1 of the Iowa Uni­form Con­trolled Sub­stances Act and Sched­ule 1 of the Fed­er­al Con­trolled Sub­stances Act.

There is no doubt the State has the author­i­ty to enact such a pro­gram, but run­ning it as a fed­er­al rack­e­teer­ing scheme endan­gers both the par­tic­i­pants as well as the gen­er­al pub­lic that has to tol­er­ate the ille­gal activ­i­ty.  The Fed­er­al CSA pro­vides author­i­ty for a waiv­er like the one for reli­gious use of pey­ote, but the State has not applied for a waiv­er.  The com­pas­sion­ate use of cannabis with­out a pre­scrip­tion should eas­i­ly qual­i­fy for a fed­er­al waiv­er.

The Fed­er­al Con­trolled Sub­stances Act allows the Attor­ney Gen­er­al to waive reg­is­tra­tion require­ments.  21 U.S.C. § 822(d) (con­sis­tent with the pub­lic health and safe­ty).  The waiv­er for pey­ote is found in 21 C.F.R. § 1307.31.  The State has not applied for and does not have a fed­er­al waiv­er for com­pas­sion­ate use of cannabis.

Suf­fer­ing Iowans are faced with the choice of vio­lat­ing fed­er­al drug law to par­tic­i­pate in this rack­e­teer­ing scheme or go with­out treat­ment.  The Peti­tion­er has offered to help the State get a waiv­er.  The board that reg­u­lates the pro­gram has lis­tened to the Peti­tion­er, adopt­ed the Petitioner’s sug­ges­tion, and ful­ly agrees the State needs to apply for a fed­er­al waiv­er.  See the board’s annu­al reports for the past five years.

Noth­ing else has changed over the past 40 years, and State’s Resis­tance sim­ply ignores this half-baked pro­gram like it nev­er exist­ed.

The exis­tence of the State’s cannabis pro­gram is the rea­son the Peti­tion­er filed this action.  The State’s cannabis pro­gram is a dra­mat­ic rever­sal of the com­pelling inter­est the State claimed to have had in the Petitioner’s pre­vi­ous cas­es.

I reserve the rest of my time your hon­or.