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Iowa Patients for Medical Marijuana Recommendations
Des Moines Marijuana Enforcement Task Force
September 18, 2020
Written by Jason Karimi
Co-Founder, Executive Director, Iowa Patients for Medical Marijuana
First of all, I would like to deeply and personally thank everyone involved in bringing this task force about, and especially thank you for the excellent work on these initial policy recommendations. My goal, and one of our goals at Iowa Patients for Medical Marijuana, is to help continue these educational discussions until the drug war is over.
The following is intended to help further that goal and is not intended to be taken as conclusive or final in any capacity.
I pray that all parties involved do not waste this opportunity to begin long-term work to right an injustice. Many people have had their potentials stunted by their inability to access marijuana without legal or ethical dilemmas being involved. The ethical dilemma that illegal marijuana use brings about ultimately proves fatal to any serious professional career, which is why decriminalization alone is not enough to protect the liberties, safeties, and freedoms of otherwise law-abiding Americans. For the majority of marijuana users who don’t get caught, they succeed by keeping secrets, and hiding their activities with lies, which stunts gained achievements and stigmatizes those who are otherwise law-abiding productive members of society.
The consciousness that the marijuana plant provides helps some people like myself stay productive and achieve great things. This is not to discount the negative impact it may have on people who are of weak constitution, or pre-disposed to mental illness, and that conversation on mental illness is one that I wholeheartedly welcome over the coming years. Decriminalization done hastily without thorough and committed, ongoing research as well as personal investment and passion will likely leave much to be desired. For that reason I urge this council to recommend that a task force that reviews marijuana laws, and their impact on drug usage rates, youth rates, and other key variables such as the impact on mental health be established on an annual basis. As someone who has worked intensely on this issue for 12 years now I would like to take this opportunity to gladly volunteer in whatever way I can to help assist any and all workings that are working to resolve this problem of drug addiction, misguided drug policy, and discrimination against drug users as a class of protected citizens.
There is much benefit to be gleaned from the medicinal attributes of psychedelics, such as Ibogaine for drug addicts, psilocybin mushrooms for end of life care, MDMA for veterans and police officers with PTSD, and other psychedelic medicines currently going through clinical trials to reach legal status for use by suffering people. With these studies in mind, I respectfully encourage any future established annual marijuana task force, as well as this current task force working this election year, to involve the addiction counseling community as much as possible, especially prioritizing addiction counselors who are educated on post-psychedelic integration techniques[1] and holistic healing modalities for people who have gone through psychedelic experiences.[2] I have included footnotes for resources in this regard that have been emailed to the Marijuana Task Force.
Ultimately drug addiction appears to be caused by a lack of interpersonal connection and community. Reversing marijuana criminal penalties will decrease drug addiction when you treat this as a sociological, and not moral, issue. Moving forward we at Iowa Patients for Medical Marijuana will explicitly continue to expect real results from these and future actionable drug policy discussions, as we are confident once this issue is taken seriously by academics, and men of honor, the exact same conclusions that we, and many colleagues around the country have reached will be put into writing as actual policy, and not mere proposals.
As Melissa Lavasani, Chairwoman of Decriminalize Nature DC recently put it, “Police priorities should reflect the growing body of research on the therapeutic benefits of entheogens rather than the failed war on drugs.” I am confident that when Iowans make up their mind to take action to solve problems that Iowans really do a thorough and decent job at finding the best solutions.[3] The most recent evidence of this thorough and excellent Iowan-created quality work — born of the Protestant work ethic and a firm foundation in discerning the difference between right and wrong — is when Iowa officials were just last week the first officials in the country smart enough to figure out the process for exempting state marijuana laws from federal law.[4] Iowa, due to years of hard work, research, and education, has become the first state to legally research and legally follow the proscribed process for harmonizing state and federal drug laws. Senator Grassley, Tom Latham, and other key figures have been educated and informed on that particular work, which has been spearheaded by Carl Olsen of Iowans for Medical Marijuana. Only Iowans would be capable of fixing what other halfway legal marijuana states were too corrupt and cowardly to do.[5] Also of note is that various anti-American forces currently at play do not wish to see state and federal marijuana laws harmonized, instead desiring to see America be as disharmonious as possible.
President Trump has called for a war on drug cartels. This war can only be fought with the pen, not the sword. I is a dereliction of morally mandated duty for policy makers and leaders who are fully informed and paying attention, to fail to engage in this drug war by legalizing and regulating marijuana – not merely decriminalizing, which benefits the drug cartels at the expense of the consumer. The cartel’s murderous terrorism[6] in Mexico is so thorough that children who walk to school and see bodies decapitated, entrails hanging out, and other graphic displays hanging from telephone wires, are used to it. It’s their childhood reality, and it’s because of US drug policy failing to engage seriously in this topic that they live in such terrifying conditions. Entire police squadrons are executed at will, because the cartels outrank the military in terms of firepower; indeed they have destroyed the overall sense of law and order for generations. Mexico’s drug murders are so consistent that in the fall of 2009, the Mexico City front page newspaper headline was “Holy shit, nobody died yesterday from the drug war.”
This particular Task Force has great potential to prevent murder, crime, death, and evil. Whether the task force yet realizes it or not, your work and efforts could become the first real, tangible cannon shot in this ideological (and by ideological, I mean intellectually predictable) policy war. The policy power of the state of Iowa is tremendous, and that should be taken advantage of here in Iowa to make a national impact.
We’ve already impacted the national marijuana policy discussion by beginning the mandatory process to exempt Iowa from federal interference with our multi-million dollar state medical marijuana program. This exemption is critical, as state marijuana laws up until now have sowed division and discord while disrespecting our system of federalism in order to further various extraneous agendas, one of which we have seen recently playing out in the murderous and extremely racist violence in our city streets around the country by those who openly want to burn America, American values, and the American way of life to the ground through various means of harassment, murder, arson, and assaults on elderly people out having dinner at a restaurant. The Controlled Substances Act explicitly calls for states to take a leading, not passive, role in policy making regarding drug policy.[7] By returning state and federal drug policy to harmonious cooperation Iowa will yet again lead the nation in how to do the right things, the right way, and for the right reasons. With the Iowa Protestant work ethic put to good use that is one of the key cultural components of the peaceful Iowa way of life, I’m optimistic and confident we will do this better than any other state in the Union.
Punitive criminal crucifixion of people who are already suffering to begin with shall no longer be tolerated, but rather instead, the Christian principles of forgiveness, understanding, compassion, and faith shall be exemplified in all of our doings here in Iowa. This issue of drug users being discriminated against in a war on American values has been both the singularly most important and impactful issue affecting the Millennial generation, of which I am a member.[8] 40% of young people like myself have a criminal record by age 24 as a result of the ideologically constructed drug war – a war on freedom of conscience[9] and ancient religious ritual that was never, ever based on science, but on keeping Chinese opium users and Mexican laborers from achieving the American dream.
As Congressman Dr. Ron Paul told a gathered group of student leaders in Virginia in 2011, when you know the right thing to do – in this case, decriminalization and regulation of marijuana products for consumer, and especially patient, safety – you are morally obligated to see to it that proffered solutions become reality, and not just election year platitudes and unfulfilled promises. Thank you in advance for fulfilling these moral obligations as we right these wrongs, wrongs whose fault lie with men long dead,[10] who will be remembered for being incorrect as well as misguided hypocrites, such as the drug war’s creator Harry Anslinger, who in spite of spearheading drug prohibition had later helped illegally sell narcotics to personal friends of his as they were “too nice” or in other words “too white” to be subject to the actual law he created.
Iowa Patients for Medical Marijuana is currently in support of all city policy recommendations with one sole exception. There is possible exception to policy proposals at this juncture we would like to make the Des Moines City Council Marijuana Task Force aware of.
Under “City Policy Recommendations,” the second line item “Adopt a pre-arrest diversion policy” may be opposed. Coercive actions of any kind are illegitimate in our view and have no legal or moral basis for being enforced. We strongly oppose, for example, Joe Biden’s and cop Kamala Harris’s plan to “offer” patients and drug users, under threat of coercive state violence, the “choice” to go to a rehab. If this policy proposal ends up becoming effectuated in that sort of manner it will not be received with welcome, as it is absolutely repugnant to anyone who has done the necessary homework to become educated on what drug policies, if any, the state should pursue.
Everything else we are currently in support of, in particular establishing a marijuana task force that revisits this issue as needed. We especially want to make sure that the state policy recommendation to “decriminalize or reduce penalties for…production of marijuana” is passed and included. Patient access to cheap, affordable, and effective home-grown marijuana is one of Iowa Patients for Medical Marijuana’s absolute top priorities. For evidence of public support for this idea, the outpouring of support from the local small town community of Jamaica Iowa after their Mayor’s involvement in producing marijuana was made known[11] should be taken as instructive regarding that action item. We also strongly support stopping the use of pretextual traffic stops and abuse of searching cars. We do not support at this point in time any proposals, if they are offered, for community review boards of police, as that is seen largely as a band-aid instead of a fix to any supposed problems within policing, if that does come up, we will remain opposed until further discussion is had. Also of important note: working with Minnesota colleagues a few years back, a friend of ours used a Freedom of Information Act request to pull arrest data for the City of Minneapolis for three years in a row. Hypothesizing that the data would show that marijuana arrests were racially correlated, we found that this was precisely not the case, and that arrests were and are more likely based on poverty. See also in regards to that particular aspect/variable of this discussion Thomas Sowell’s writings and teachings on systemic racism.[12]
Of possible note, and while not speaking on behalf of Iowa Patients for Medical Marijuana per se, I personally and very, very strongly do not wish to see any political organizations, or organizations that condone, tacitly approve, or fail to condemn political violence or violence in any form whatsoever,[13] be awarded any seat at any table for marijuana, psychedelic, or drug policy decriminalization talks at this point in time (whether currently existing, or organized in the future for the express purpose of committing acts of terrorism against elected or appointed officials as a means of political negotiation.)
Otherwise, all of the policy proposals that have been identified and particularized appear to have been well thought out, and we are very grateful for all of your hard work to bring science, best practices, and rationality to this issue, and we look forward to these necessary long-form discussions over many years to come. We have previously sent 65 policy suggestions to the task force for their consideration to help in that regard that were gathered from the state medical marijuana community at large.[14]
Thank you in humble sincerity,
Jason Karimi
Executive Director, Iowa Patients for Medical Marijuana
[1] https://integration.maps.org/
[2] https://maps.org/resources
[3] In order to further the goals of the organization, “Iowa Harm Reduction Coalition,” regarding preventative education of the psychological, biological and overall potentially lethal or debilitating effects of personal drug use, please refer to https://www.erowid.org/. See also the Iowa Harm Reduction Coalition website at https://www.iowaharmreductioncoalition.org/. Erowid has long been a widely recognized and authoritative source within the drug user community for preventing preventable harms up to and including death or permanent damage done to or by novice or uneducated/inexperienced drug users. This website may prove critical as a reference in effectuating rational and effective drug policy within the state of Iowa, and the City of Des Moines, by the time these talks are eventually completed.
[4] In strange twist, Iowa is actually doing something right on marijuana reform, Sullivan https://www.thegazette.com/subject/opinion/staff-columnist/iowa-medical-cannabis-federal-schedule-i-dea-exemption-carl-olsen-20200910
[5] People v. Crouse, 388 P.3d 39, 43 (Colorado 2017) “Consistent with our holding in Coats v Dish Network (Colorado 2015), then, we again find that conduct is ‘lawful’ only if it complies with both state and federal law.” (emphasis added is mine)
[6] The Staggering Toll of Mexico’s Drug War https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/the-staggering-death-toll-of-mexicos-drug-war/
[7] https://iowamedicalmarijuana.org/legal/grinspoon_1987/
[8] Why We Need To End The War On Drugs | Ethan Nadelmann, Drug Policy Alliance https://www.ted.com/talks/ethan_nadelmann_why_we_need_to_end_the_war_on_drugs?language=en
[9] https://law.justia.com/constitution/minnesota/Article1.html Sec. 16. FREEDOM OF CONSCIENCE; NO PREFERENCE TO BE GIVEN TO ANY RELIGIOUS ESTABLISHMENT OR MODE OF WORSHIP. The enumeration of rights in this constitution shall not deny or impair others retained by and inherent in the people. The right of every man to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience shall never be infringed; nor shall any man be compelled to attend, erect or support any place of worship, or to maintain any religious or ecclesiastical ministry, against his consent; nor shall any control of or interference with the rights of conscience be permitted, or any preference be given by law to any religious establishment or mode of worship; but the liberty of conscience hereby secured shall not be so construed as to excuse acts of licentiousness or justify practices inconsistent with the peace or safety of the state, nor shall any money be drawn from the treasury for the benefit of any religious societies or religious or theological seminaries.
[10] Adam Ruins Drugs
https://www.trutv.com/shows/adam-ruins-everything/articles/adam-ruins-drugs
[11] How a small town reacted when its mayor was caught growing weed https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/apr/08/small-town-iowa-jamaica-mayor-caught-growing-weed
[12] For example, see “Thomas Sowell on Abolishing the Police, Reparations and Systematic Racism” by Thomas Sowell, published on YouTube Aug 1 2020 at https://youtu.be/z0tr1F_VxuA
[13] https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/local/2020/07/31/bernell-trammell-death-milwaukee-shooting-victims-memory-stays-alive/5557683002/
[14] Iowa Patients for Medical Marijuana, Longtime Advocacy Group, Submitted These 65 Policy Suggestions To Decriminalize Des Moines Task Force https://weedpress.wordpress.com/2020/08/19/iowa-patients-for-medical-marijuana-longtime-advocacy-group-submitted-these-65-policy-suggestions-to-decriminalize-des-moines-task-force/
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