WeedPress: The Paper Trail

Lawsuit Against State of Iowa Challenges Constitutionality of Controlled Substances Act

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by

Jason Karimi, WeedPress Contributor
in

This June, Carl Olsen filed a lawsuit against the State of Iowa for failure to remove cannabis from Schedule I. Read the lawsuit here.

After asking for an extra 30 days to reply to the lawsuit’s constitutional allegations against the State of Iowa, the Iowa Attorney General’s Office filed a motion to dismiss the case. Read the state’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit here.

Today, petitioner Carl Olsen responded to the state’s motion to resist. In his brief today, Olsen shot down the State’s feeble attempt to dismiss a legal question that has been a long time coming: Does cannabis have “accepted medical use,” “in the United States?”

In 1971, the Iowa Legislature placed marijuana in Schedule I, a Schedule that says that marijuana has “no accepted medical use.” Olsen is arguing that the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the United States Constitution requires Iowa to acknowledge that cannabis is misclassified in Schedule I, as the requirement of “accepted medical use” that the Legislature set in 1971 has been met, “in the United States.” Citing the 16 state medical marijuana laws (and D.C.), Olsen argues that 16 state laws (and the District of Columbia) requires the state of Iowa to remove marijuana from the Controlled Substance Act, “because controlling facts have changed significantly since 1971.”

If Olsen has his way, cannabis will be completely removed from the Controlled Substances Act. Read today’s filing here.

Scott Imler, one of the original authors of Proposition 215, had this to say recently about this case:

“[Prop 215] was not designed as an end all or be all for everything “green and kind”. It was designed to protect patients and their family who were using or obtaining (growing, buying, being given, etc) marijuana for their own personal medical use or that of a family member/ friend/caregivee). It was not designed to authorize commercial operations or spawn and industry. It was designed to provide and affirmative defense in court.

Jason. Carl’s filing is a brilliant piece of work – as usual. He has been at the struggle in Iowa as long if not longer than anyone anywhere. IMO, he is grossly under-appreciated and he seems to have outdone himself this time.”

Olsen’s legal argument seeks to accomplish what the legal medical marijuana states have failed to accomplish: a Constitutional right to cannabis at the federal level. Currently, cannabis is still in Schedule I at the Federal level, despite overwhelming evidence that this is an inaccurate classification.

Here’s one of my favorite excerpts from Olsen’s brief today:

“Although the Legislature does not have to listen to the Iowa Board of Pharmacy’s expert medical opinion, law controls, not science. The Respondent can ignore the science, but not the law. The law requires that marijuana be removed from schedule I, even if the Board had found that marijuana had no medical efficacy whatsoever.”

The Iowa Legislature made this law back in 1971; it’s time the law was followed. This case has huge potential for Iowa’s medical marijuana efforts. Follow WeedPress on Facebook for updates on this important case.

Comments

10 responses to “Lawsuit Against State of Iowa Challenges Constitutionality of Controlled Substances Act”

  1. suckmebush Avatar
    suckmebush

    agreeing with all of your article, my way of saying the business with schedule one is a bit different. Cannabis has to come out of schedule one in Iowa because the classification does not fit the updated elements involved with the substance. More specifically, the element that directs the attention of all parties to the status of the substance in states not our own.

    This regard of usage-legality in other states is held, in schedule one, as a critical requirement here in Iowa. The portion of law dealing with this mess is an “and” statement that the given substance, marijuana/cannabis absolutely Must have every, last one of… or else it is a missing element and you can Not have a missing element.

    If you have a missing element and you get the update entered into law, nasty trickery occurs at this point, then that brings up issues like Due Process. The law has to be in conformity to itself! And this schedule one is Not in conformity to itself.

    Additionally, as the IBoP has griped itself in the past, even executive authorities have trouble trying to use the marijuana schedule acts because of irregularities in the code.

    We press for update to obtain increased congruity in the law of our home state.

    And, we want weed. What’s incongruous about that?

    ye Bush

    Reply
  2. Jonesiedoo Avatar
    Jonesiedoo

    I don’t recall the posting, but a republican from texas [i too was highly shocked] & a democrat from north east submitted a bill [# escapes me atm] to CONGRESS asking the federal side remove themselves and have marijuana handled at a state level for all of the USA! [Just as alcohol is!]

    Reply
    1. jsnsoc8 Avatar
      jsnsoc8

      Ron Paul, Barney Frank, Introduce H.R. 2306 to End Federal Prohibition!

      That what you’re thinking of? I forgot to get around to doing it but I’ve been meaning to put the text to the bill up on here. I’ve been a bit overwhelmed recently…I’ll try and get around to doing that tonight.

      Reply
  3. bush Avatar
    bush

    Hey, brother, if you think You are overwhelmed, imagine our pay backs on our borrowing just got bigger than all the entire money we take in! get out of your life insurance, 401. and even your IRA garbage with its rippoff 33% screw job for pulling your money out early. Do it.

    why? because what do the insurances pay if you die? dollars.

    what can you buy, with dollars, when the currency implodes in the next twelve months, maybe six or so…. almost nothing.

    more on the subject of the law suit for declarative judgement. I see quite a bit of what I was talking about included in
    Carl Olsen’s return fire where he defends his standing and refutes the Response from the State.

    It’s going to be the most wonderful riot at the state house Ever when they are forced to free the weed. In Iowa, pot will be in no schedule at all. The guardians of public morality, bunch of marijuana idiots, highly presumptuous lawyers and yuppies who live in a different world than I do… will have to emergency scramble to get the lid on the Green Menace.

    I am thinking the legislature will have an emergency recommendation from the pharmacy board and implement it.

    Sure, they sound That alarm. Where were they when it was in two schedules for decades?

    During this time we need to appear in the news papers and on tv asking, “Well, here we are in the New Land and I want to know, where are all the marijuana deaths? where are the reefer addicts all strung out on pot and wandering in the traffic naked?

    And, since the total destruction of lying schedule one, How many dead, or addicted teenagers showed up at the emergency room to get “help”?

    None???? NONE at all? wtf?

    and the truth will be forced out some more.

    And the liars in the lawyers corps will continue on their merry, less than useless, way and install schedule two, which has the Same jail penalites as schedule one.

    And, then, we will go after the idiots who don’t care one damned bit about what the truth even looks like because they are on the Pot Haters and Marijuana Witch Hunters bandwagon. We will nail them at the federal level and we will come after them even harder this time… to crush schedule two in Iowa.

    I don’t think the state knows shit from shoes about drugs. I buried the proof. Now, I’m pissed and going to do something about it. That’s why my name is on that suit this article is about. I am a listed affected party on Carl’s action. I am one of a short list of his friends who helps him get initial standing before the court to mash these idiots.

    I could be just as silent as most people, but I won’t allow it. Reefer Madness is going under my bob manke foot.

    Pot and drugs have been turned into a gigantic hidden tax on the people by the CIA and armed services thereof to fund highly illegal extra constitutional filth.

    The war pig is going to meet the peace rhino and we aren’t going to play well together, again.

    See, the war pig doesn’t care about the low level civil war that has been agonizing our nation for years. They burn and need to hog Big money for what they want to do…. grow and grow and kill.

    It’s not going to stop China from swallowing Taiwan.

    It’s been a reall shitty lie and we need hemp to source our cloths with out oil to make huge nitrogen to feed cotton with.

    We need hemp to get out of using food to make fuel for cars with and get the price of food down some. We want things cheaper? We have food and that is power for very real. We must be more responsible.

    I choose weapons of Light and resist death by my choices. Sure, I’m a work in progress, but I am in progress. That I am part of this suit is proof that we can be very very hurt and still be effective citizens.

    As I told terry bransted and the ag secretary in Feb this year, “They are having food riots… the price of corn has tripled… we need to be putting marijuana in that ethanol plant, not corn.”

    And we do.

    Reply
  4. Ron Avatar
    Ron

    After reading the posts I come to the conclusion that we need to control any type of mind altering drugs devices. I believe that is why one must go to a doctor and receive a prescription. The reason for the prescription is to keep drugs from being abused or sold to others. I know people who have used illegal drugs or abuse prescription drugs and they became violent and threatening and confrontational. These individuals will do anything to get a fix. We need laws to control those who don’t have the common sense to come in out of the rain. The conclusion, the user becomes addicted to drugs or what ever and it becomes their worst enemy, not the laws that control the abuse.

    Reply
    1. jsnsoc8 Avatar
      jsnsoc8

      Would you like to make alcohol illegal?

      Reply
  5. suckmebush Avatar
    suckmebush

    Hi Ron, what you and I are talking about are Systemic problems. We have installed a national system of criminalization that employs shame and degradation, job destruction, family destruction and the use of the sword of the state to carve citizens up who violate the drug laws.

    That is a systemic answer to the questions about what do we do with people who use drugs?

    There are other answers. Other and imo better systemic answers could well involve the medical route.

    There are drugs and there are drugs. I get them all. An example would be my fentanyl. Molecule for molecule fentanyl is 10,000 times as powerful as addicting as morphine sulfate, which I can also get and have. Morphine sucks. It’s just awful.

    And, then, there’s pot. You don’t get a drug hangover from pot because drug hangovers come from toxic reactions, usually to the brain among other organs. You get a hang over because ethyl alcohol causes brain swelling and then the brain is contacting the skull, for real. It hurts.

    Should you be jailed for doing that to yourself?

    Under some circumstances of high risk behavior a case could be made for yes.

    What about pot? the most reliable way to kill someone with a marijuana overdose is to the take the required weight of pot and drop it on the pot smoker’s head and kill them that way. It would take that much pot to kill someone. It is a really huge amount in a very short time to actually hurt someone with pot.

    You mention the reason for prescriptions and I have to ask you, have you any idea what a dose related side effect profile is? Unlikely. Most people don’t, either.

    What is medicine at one dose, in one body, is lethal or non effective, in another.

    Put me down for get drugs off the criminal control model because it doesn’t work and onto the medical control model because it doesn’t murder nearly so many people. People are what these systems are supposed to be protecting and supporting.

    Reply
  6. Damn Iowans… – Toyota MR2 Message Board

    […] Damn Iowans… Finding loopholes in the US Constitution.. Lawsuit Against State of Iowa Challenges Constitionality of Controlled Substances Act, Seeks to Comp… […]

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  7. suckmebush Avatar
    suckmebush

    We had an interesting day, today. Jay, Carl Olsen, Kirt from Minnesotta Norml, and I appeared in court to defend Carl and I’s standing to bring suit against Iowa for declaratory judgement and we were all rather shocked when the judge did not stop with just that action but rather proceeded to actually get us somewhat into what i thought was trial actions. The prosecutor was as described by Carl, gentlemanly and the loyal opposition. He presented some seriously considered opposing legal constructions and Carl was able, imo, to fight them off.

    As no medical users other than myself showed up that were also listed on the court documents as applying to join Carl’s action, I kind of think it was really really a good idea i spent the gas money to show up lol

    I am thrilled to have made my case before the judge as someone here in Iowa who has a medical standing and has been hurt by denial of my reefah! And I Have, dimmit!

    I have a sense of humor, but I am all serious about freeing the herb. The other advocate buds not active in the case affirmed my spirited defense of my standing and my losses due to imposition of schedule one. Among my losses i complain of is the loss of research because there actually is no research like schedule two would allow.

    The book burner’s club need not continue to apply to the marijuana lover’s club for a fix.

    I think we get till like, Dec 20 for the ruling on whether Carl and I succeeded.

    I think we got some traction action, folks!

    ye bush

    Reply
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