For years we have warned that state marijuana laws would someday lead to some politician seizing up the federal funds to deal with the anarchy of illegal state marijuana laws.
Linda Upmeyer and the Iowa Republicans enthusiastically encouraged Iowans to smuggle cannabis medicine from out of state, and then repeatedly endorsed an illegal mafia program in Iowa, ran by federal outlaws.
When activists like myself or others repeatedly said at public hearings that this illegal anarchy mafia situation is untenable, the State of Iowa repeatedly said, “So what?” Iowa, they reasoned, would never have any incentive to do the right thing.
And then this news comes out of Maine yesterday afternoon while I was cramming for my finals:
Federal mental health grants canceled because Maine has legal marijuana
A federal agency wipes out $3.3 million to students who have medical authorization.
Because Maine allows the medical use of marijuana by students, the federal government is cutting off $3.3 million in already approved funding to support mental health programs for youngsters.
It isn’t clear whether the new federal policy may impact other grants received by the state.
The state won a five-year federal grant in 2018 that provided $1.1 million annually for a program called Maine-AWARE to assist in bolstering the social service infrastructure to support student mental health in three districts across the state.
Maine received the money for the first two years, but recently learned it won’t get any more due to a policy change in Washington that cuts off states that allow students access to medical marijuana.
Pender Makin, the state commissioner of education, said in a May 6 email to a local superintendent that “a new requirement” on the federal level cut off the funding in its third year “because of our state’s medical marijuana law, which requires schools to allow students who have written certification from their medical provider indicating their need for medical marijuana to receive such treatment while at school.”
Makin said Maine has a statutory obligation to permit students to use medical marijuana if they possess the necessary prescription for it.
The federal Department of Health and Human Services, which handles the Advancing Wellness and Resiliency in Education grant, also known as AWARE, did not respond to requests for comment Thursday or Friday.
Kelli Deveaux, director of communications for the state Department of Education, said Friday that officials don’t know yet if other grants may be impacted “by this new and arbitrary requirement.”
The loss of federal aid is a setback for a state that is trying to cope with an alarming amount of mental health issues among students.
A research letter published a year ago in JAMA Pediatrics found that Maine had the highest rate in the country of children diagnosed with depression, anxiety or attention deficit disorder.
More than one in four Maine children ages 6 to 17 had at least one of the disorders, the study found. About half of them did not receive needed treatment or counseling from a mental health professional, the researchers found.
The federal Health and Human Services division that canceled the grant, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, said the program it had funded focuses on “partnerships and collaboration between state and local systems to promote the healthy development of school-aged youth and prevent youth violence.”
RSU 10 Superintendent Deb Alden in Rumford, whose district got $200,000 in each of the past two years through the grant, called the abrupt end to the program “just really disheartening.”
The decision to clamp down on states that allow the use of marijuana appears to be part of a larger effort by President Donald Trump’s administration to punish states that haven’t toed the line on the federal government’s long-standing policy of treating marijuana as an illegal drug. It may impact grants related to the opioid crisis as well.
The substance agency, in many presentations, has made clear that it considers marijuana a dangerous drug that can lead to poor school performance, increased risk of motor vehicle accidents, cognitive impairment and other problems.
This completely “arbitrary” problem was fixable had Maine followed what Iowa’s advocates are doing. Our solution has been endorsed by the medical professionals in Iowa as well, so, everyone is on the same page, we just need the lawmakers to do the right thing. That’s the only issue. The marijuana movement lacks any political power whatsoever in Iowa in 2020, so, having the truth on our side is not enough. Hopefully with arbitrary administrative decisions from the feds finally starting to (as we predicted) cut off state funds since the states are all blatantly flipping off the federal government, the state lawmakers will finally have the one incentive they care about to protect Iowa patients from federal law issues like taxes and banking: lawmaker money for pet projects.
This is a big deal, and, I expect to see those in the know in the marijuana movement addressing the severity of this recent development, as this is a first I’m aware of that state funds have been invoked as a result of federally illegal state medical marijuana experiments.
WeedPress: The Paper Trail 
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