Source: https://carl-olsen.com/
Timestamp: 2019-04-21 17:16:34+00:00

Document:
On Saturday, March 30, the Des Moines Register reported that a member of the Medical Cannabidiol Advisory Committee resigned over comments made on the floor of the House during debate on House File 732.
Iowa House members who voted this week to allow the sale of stronger medical marijuana products said they were following the advice of physicians on a state board — even though that board voted unanimously last fall not to recommend the change.
The House’s action prompted the resignation this week of a physician who serves on the Iowa Medical Cannabidiol Advisory Board.
Des Moines neurologist Wendy Zadeh was among eight board members who voted in November 2018 to maintain the state’s 3% cap on THC, the chemical that can make marijuana users high.
Medical marijuana bill allowing stronger medications contradicts stance of state’s expert panel, Des Moines Register, March 29, 2019.
The article incorrectly states that HF 732 was drafted solely from the input of the advisory committee. Video of the debate reveals that the advisory committee and “others” were involved in drafting the bill. Representative Klein said the bill was the result of working with members of the board “and both parties,” not solely of input from the board.
In another example of inaccurate reporting, on March 5, WHO TV reported that Senate File 256 would remove the THC limit that producers can put in each dose of medical cannabidiol. But SF 256 did not remove the 3% cap on THC. The next day House Study Bill 244 (now HF 732) was introduced and voted out of subcommittee at 9:30 a.m. the same day it was introduced. HSB 244 (HF 732) actually does remove the 3% cap on THC.
The medical cannabidiol board may recommend a statutory revision to the definition of medical cannabidiol contained in this chapter that increases the tetrahydrocannabinol level to more than three percent, however, any such recommendation shall be submitted to the general assembly during the regular session of the general assembly following such submission. The general assembly shall have the sole authority to revise the definition of medical cannabidiol for purposes of this chapter.
Here is a time line that will fill in some (but, not all) of the missing details.
Leaving the THC cap on medical cannabidiol products manufactured in Iowa at 3% in Iowa Code §124E.5(6).
Removing felony disqualifiers for patients and primary caregivers in Iowa Code §124E.4(1)(f) and Iowa Code §124E.4(3)(c).
Adding physician assistant or advanced registered nurse practitioner to the definition of health care practitioner in Iowa Code §124E.2(5).
SF 256 was introduced by Senator Brad Zaun.
Left the THC cap at 3%.
Added physician assistant and advanced registered nurse practitioner to the definition of health care practitioner.
SF 256 passed out of subcommittee at 3:30 p.m. on February 18.
House Speaker Linda Upmeyer, the top Republican in the House, has said lawmakers should wait for recommendations from a state board appointed to oversee Iowa’s medical marijuana program, so these expansion plans being discussed in the Senate face an uncertain future.
Medical marijuana expansion clears Iowa Senate subcommittee, Radio Iowa, February 18, 2019.
House Speaker Linda Upmeyer’s spokesman said recently that she continues to doubt the need for legislators to loosen restrictions on which Iowans can purchase the medications. She would prefer that any such moves come from a board of physicians that was appointed last year to consider proposals.
Iowa Poll: 78% want medical marijuana program expanded, 48% would allow recreational pot, Des Moines Register, February 23, 2019.
“There are things that can be done, things we will do, that make it a little easier, a little safer and give the board a little more latitude,” House Speaker Linda Upmeyer, R-Clear Lake, said Tuesday after meeting with members of the Medical Cannabidiol Board.
House speaker eyes more cannabidiol access for Iowans, Cedar Rapids Gazette, February 26, 2019.
The bill would remove the limit of THC that producers can put in each dose, allow for more dispensaries in the state, and mandate Iowa’s Medical Cannabidiol Board to include PTSD on the list of qualifying conditions.
Medical Marijuana Expansion, E-Verify Mandate Bills Both Advance Through Funnel Week, WHO TV 13, March 5, 2019.
HSB 244 introduced by Committee on Public Safety Chairperson Representative Jarad Klein. Oddly, Representative Klein’s bill actually does remove the limit on THC that WHO TV incorrectly reported was in the Senate bill a day earlier.
HSB 244 passed out of subcommittee at 9:30 a.m. on the same day it was introduced.
HF 732 passed out of committee (formerly HSB 244) by a vote of 21-0.
HF 732 passed in the House by a vote of 96-3.
Representative Klein’s bill recommended removing the limit on THC, which the advisory board did not recommend. But Representative Klein said the advisory board and “others” were included in preparation of the legislative proposal. The advisory board was never given authority to write legislation. A good analogy would be the recommendation of the pharmacy board in 2010 to remove marijuana from state schedule 1, which the legislature still hasn’t done. Chapter 124E authorizes the advisory board to recommend increasing the THC limit, but not to recommend lowering it or even keeping it at 3%.
Until February 26, Speaker Upmeyer had been saying there would be no changes this year which did not leave Chairman Klein a lot of time to run a bill a week before the funnel deadline.
The Senate started working earlier and gave people more time to participate.
Representative Klein deserves an award for work extremely well done in a short amount of time and under extreme pressure. HF 732 has been referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee where it will receive further consideration.
The following amendment became part of SF 501 on Tuesday, March 5, 2019, by a vote of 14 – 1 in the Iowa Senate Judiciary Committee. Please add the same language to HSB 244.
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). Stigmatizing patients as criminals should not be something suffering Iowans are burdened with. 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). For the same reason, DEA must exempt a state medical cannabis program. We need to declare we have the right to do this and that DEA must include an exemption in Title 21 Section 1307 of the Code of Federal Regulations.
A senator sent me a copy of a proposed amendment we would like added to SF 256 currently pending in the Iowa Senate Judiciary Committee. We would greatly appreciate your support.
It is critically important that this 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). This is not something suffering Iowans should be burdened with. 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). For the same reason, DEA must exempt a state medical cannabis program. We need to declare we have the right to do this and that DEA must include this 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, Iowa Code § 124E.12(4) (2019), when used for medical purposes and peyote is exempt from the Iowa Controlled Substance Act when used for religious purposes, Iowa Code § 124.204(8) (2019). One could presume the religious exemption exists because of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guaranteeing religious freedom, and it then follows that a state medical cannabis law should be exempt because of the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guaranteeting state autonomy and self-determination. The DEA grants exemptions and it must do so even-handedly.
Before we filed the DEA petition, we were talking about people who might have standing to file the petition. We talked about a medical cannabidiol card holder and someone being denied assistance from the Veterans Administration (VA) in getting a cannabidiol card. However, we filed the petition without anyone with standing to appeal if we get an adverse ruling. The DEA could ignore our lack of standing and grant the exemption on the merits, but we won’t be able to appeal if the DEA decides not to grant the exemption. I have no personal standing and I’m not an attorney. The other petitioner is an attorney, but he also has no personal standing. Unlike me, an attorney can represent a party that does have standing. I have included more information on “standing” in the federal courts below.
Someone who is being denied assistance in getting a card by the VA (this would have to be because of a VA policy, not the doctor simply declining to issue the certification as the Iowa laws allows doctors to decline).
A patient or caregiver who has a medical cannabidiol card.
A dispensary that has a dispensary license.
A manufacturer that has a manufacturing license.
These are the people we are claiming to represent. As it stands now, patients, caregivers, dispensaries, and manufactures are walking on egg shells trying to get the program expanded and they haven’t volunteered to come forward to help us with standing and it’s highly unlikely that they will.
I spent the afternoon on Monday, February 18, at the state capitol talking with legislators and state administrative officials. Help should logically be forthcoming from legislators or a state administrative agency like the Iowa Department of Public Health (IDPH). Legislators and administrative officials have a vested interest in defending and upholding state law and they are not manufacturers, dispensaries, caregivers, or patients (state officials are not personally at risk, but they do have standing). I initiated contact with IDPH with this specific request on January 31 and followed up again on February 18 at the state capitol. A state senator submitted an amendment to a proposed bill, SF 256, that would amend the Iowa Medical Cannabiol Act (Iowa Code Chapter 124E) with language based on our DEA petition. I have been discussing this with legislator and IDPH for the past couple of years (since Chapter 124E was enacted in 2017), but the DEA petition has now started the clock ticking and it’s time for action.
For those who don’t know what standing is, below is an explanation given by the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Petitioners contend that they have “automatic standing” to appeal the DEA’s denial of their petition because 21 U.S.C. § 811(a)(2) permits “any interested party” to file a petition to initiate rulemaking proceedings. They suggest that this is enough — since they are the original petitioners before the DEA they should not be “held to heightened requirements for standing in pursuing judicial review of the DEA’s order,” and at no time during the administrative proceedings has the DEA claimed that they are not “interested parties” under 21 U.S.C. § 811(a)(2). Petitioners misunderstand the law. Petitioners may be “interested parties” under the statute, and therefore able to petition the agency, and yet not have Article III standing to bring this action in federal court. See Fund Democracy, LLC v. SEC, 278 F.3d 21, 27 (D.C. Cir. 2002). “Participation in agency proceedings is alone insufficient to satisfy judicial standing requirements.” Id. Mere interest as an advocacy group is not enough. The fact that Congress may have given all interested parties the right to petition the agency does not in turn “automatically”confer Article III standing when that right is deprived. See id. at 27-28. The Constitution requires a concrete and particularized injury. This is not a “heightened requirement,” but rather the bare minimum. Thus, the grant of a procedural right alone cannot serve as the basis for Article III standing unless “the procedures in question are designed to protect some threatened concrete interest of [petitioners’] that is the ultimate basis of his standing.” Fund Democracy, 278 F.3d at 28 (quoting Lujan, 504 U.S. at 573 n.8). The sufficiency of the sort of “interest” allowing an interested party to petition an agency at the will of Congress and the justicially protectable “interest” required for an injury to afford standing in the courts is fundamentally the difference between the political branches on the one hand and the Article III courts on the other. While it is perfectly proper, and indeed appropriate and even necessary, for the political branches to respond to the abstract, ideological, philosophical or even idiosyncratic wishes and needs of citizens or, for that matter, persons at large, the courts are granted authority only for the purpose delineated in Article III, section 2, clause 1 of the Constitution and “may exercise power only ‘in the last resort and as a necessity.’“ Allen v. Wright, 468 U.S. 737, 752, 82 L. Ed. 2d 556, 104 S. Ct. 3315 (1984) (quoting Chicago & Grand Trunk Ry., 143 U.S. 339 at 345).
Therefore, contrary to petitioners’ suggestion, it is not at all anomalous that Congress could permit them as “interested parties” (assuming that they are) to participate in agency proceedings, and yet they be unable to seek review in the federal courts. “Because agencies are not constrained by Article III, they may permit persons to intervene in the agency proceedings who would not have standing to seek judicial review of the agency action.” Fund Democracy, 278 F.3d at 27; see Envirocare of Utah, Inc. v. NRC, 338 U.S. App. D.C. 282, 194 F.3d 72, 74 (D.C. Cir. 1999). In other words, the “criteria for establishing ‘administrative standing’ therefore may permissibly be less demanding than the criteria for ‘judicial standing.’” Envirocare, 194 F.3d at 74. Thus, unless petitioners can demonstrate an injury in fact, both particularized and concrete, as required by the Constitution, they lack standing to appear before an Article III court.
Gettman v. DEA, 290 F.3d 430, 433-434 (D.C. Cir. 2002).
10. Notwithstanding federal administrative regulations, 21 C.F.R. §1308.11 Schedule I, (23) Marihuana, (31) Tetrahydrocannabinols, and (58) Marihuana Extract, Administration Controlled Substances Code Numbers 7360, 7370, and 7350, state authorized use of cannabis, tetrahydrocannabinols, and cannabis extracts, are exempt from federal regulations pursuant to the state’s historic police power to define the accepted medical use of controlled substances. See Gonzales v. Oregon, 546 U.S. 243, 258 (2006) (“The Attorney General has rulemaking power to fulfill his duties under the CSA. The specific respects in which he is authorized to make rules, however, instruct us that he is not authorized to make a rule declaring illegitimate a medical standard for care and treatment of patients that is specifically authorized under state law”). This is also because Congress did not define the term “accepted medical use” in the Controlled Substances Act of 1970, Public Law 91-513, 84 Stat. 1236, October 27, 1970. See Grinspoon v. DEA, 881 F.2d 877, 886 (1987) (“Congress did not intend ‘accepted medical use in treatment in the United States’ to require a finding of recognized medical use in every state or, as the Administrator contends, approval for interstate marketing of the substance”); and Alliance for Cannabis Therapeutics v. DEA, 930 F.2d 936, 939 (D.C. Cir. 1991) (“neither the statute nor its legislative history precisely defines the term ‘currently accepted medical use’”). See, for example, 14 C.F.R. §91.19(b) (“this section does not apply to … marihuana … authorized by or under any … State statute or by any … State agency”).
Iowa Code Chapter 124E, the Iowa Medical Cannabidiol Act, lacks a section on compliance with existing federal law.
Cannabis is a federal schedule 1 controlled substance, and yet Iowa Code Chapter 124E doesn’t even mention it. Why?
SF 2398 proves Iowa legislators know federal law exists, but the legislature failed to address federal law in Iowa Code Chapter 124E.
This causes numerous problems for patients and providers, some of which are documented in an Article from November 30, 2018, in the Des Moines Register.
This year is a perfect time to address the situation by stating clearly that Iowa is creating an exemption from existing federal schedule 1. Any law the state has a federal constitutional right to enact is a law the federal government must honor and respect.
Federal schedule 1 is only for substances that have no accepted medical use in the states. The legislature has created an accepted medical use for cannabis in Iowa.
This state protection under existing federal law doesn’t extend beyond the state’s borders, but it does provide Iowa patients and providers with the protection they need when being accused of violating federal law here in Iowa.
Please fix this broken law so the people it was intended to help do not needlessly suffer due to the state’s gross negligence to explain how it complies with existing federal law.

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