There has been some confusion lately about who I am, what I do, and why I do it. So, what’s new? I thought a formal post was in order.
Some people think showing their legislators medical evidence is a good idea. In fact, they think it’s such a good idea that they think I should do it. Here’s my problem with that.
FIRST, I’m not a medical expert and neither are my state legislators. My state senator is an attorney. My state representative is a school administrator. My U.S. Senator is an attorney. My U.S. representative owns a seed company. There’s not a medical expert in the bunch.
SECOND, the Iowa Controlled Substances Act has a detailed procedure for evaluating medical evidence, in Iowa Code Chapter 124 Section 201. The legislators made this law requiring the Iowa Board of Pharmacy to evaluate medical evidence based on 8 factors. If the legislators had considered themselves experts on medical evidence, why would they have assigned this duty to the Iowa Board of Pharmacy? This same law requires the Iowa Board of Pharmacy to advise the legislators on what the medical evidence says.
So, clearly, the place to present the evidence is to the Iowa Board of Pharmacy. I presented the medical evidence to the Iowa Board of Pharmacy in 2009, and in 2010 the board ruled unanimously that marijuana is medicine. The board advised the legislature to change the law.
What needs to happen now is that I need to continue putting pressure on the Iowa Board of Pharmacy to do its job by updating the legislators and I need to put pressure on the legislators to obey the law they wrote. Going directly to the legislators with medical evidence is contrary to the way this law was written. What I need to be telling legislators is that I expect them to obey the law they wrote.