SF1470 rescheduling amendment

Mildly edited transcript:

Chair: Senator Dziedzic

Senator Kari Dziedzic: Thank you Mr. Chair, I have the A-4 amendment if
it could be passed out. Thank you Mr. Chair, Senator Limmer, so what
this does is, again to further the discussion...

Marijuana is currently classified as a Schedule I drug and this
[amendment] has some conforming sections but the main sections are 2 and
3 and that moves [marijuana and nonsynthetic THC] from Schedule I to
Schedule II.

Dr. Wiberg can correct me if I'm wrong, I'm actually looking at a
website by the American Association of Pediatric Doctors, and it lists
Schedule I drugs.

Schedule I drugs have no currently accepted medical use. They are
considered dangerous. Some examples of Schedule I drugs are heroin, LSD,
marijuana and ecstasy.

Schedule II drugs, they say are still considered potentially dangerous
but they, again, [Schedule I] has the "no medical use" and we have
medical marijuana, so it's just, again, for the discussion purposes, to
say that we allow medical marijuana so there probably is some medical
use in here.

So it is more symbolic.

The website that I'm on is the American Academy of Pediatrics and they
do make a note next to marijuana where it says "The Impact on Marijuana
Policies on Youth". [The note says], "a research and a legal update
recommends rescheduling marijuana from a Schedule I drug to Schedule II
drug because some of the active ingredients in marijuana, in the
cannabis plant, have shown in limited research to have some medical
benefit for particular conditions."

So again, I'm offering this just for discussion purposes to see if we
can move this conversation along.

We are leaving synthetic [THC in Schedule I] because there are still a
lot of questions on that. We are removing marijuana [from Schedule I]
and we still leave in the synthetic [THC in Schedule I]. We are adding
[nonsynthetic] marijuana, cannabis, and cannabinoids [to Schedule II].
Sections 1, 4, and 5 are conforming sections. That's the amendment.

Chair: Senator Limmer

Senator Limmer: I want to ask Dr. Wiberg to answer and maybe comment.

Chair: Dr. Wiberg

Wiberg: Mr. Chair, members of the committee, I'll get around to maybe
making a recommendation here but just a little bit of a backdrop. So the
Board of Pharmacy used to have the authority to move anything around in
the Schedules and actually when I started this job 13 years ago and was
reading through the statutes I realized that the Board had the authority
to take marijuana out of the Schedules. The Board has declined to do
that over the years. We were actually petitioned three times to move
marijuana out of the Schedules. But our reason for denying those
petitions had nothing to do with the effectiveness of marijuana or
whether or not marijuana is accepted for medical uses. There's really no
definition of what "accepted medical use" means. The DEA tried to say
years ago that accepted medical use was FDA approval. They actually lost
in a Federal Court case. But that was based on the fact that the DEA did
not have the access to a document that all of the states used when the
states completed their controlled substance scheduling acts in the early
1970s. That document basically recommended that states should define
approved use as being FDA approved. If you use that definition, which is
not in our statutes, you would basically say marijuana doesn't have
approved medical uses because the FDA does not approve of it, however,
obviously, 36 states have approved cannabis or medical marijuana laws,
so the legislatures of those states believe, including ours, believe
that at least some of the materials in the cannabis plant, including
marijuana plants, have approved medical use. I think ultimately that
this is a legislative issue as to whether or not to Schedule it. I did
take a look at this, in fact I think there was an advocate who asked me
to look at this language and it looks like the language I went over with
him. When we did deny the petitions, we did it on legal grounds because
even at that point, even if the Board had put marijuana into a different
Schedule there's no way that we could have taken it completely out of
the Schedules. To do that we would have had to have concluded that
marijuana had absolutely no abuse potential and I think even advocates
of medical marijuana agree that it can have abuse potential. So what we
could have done is moved it to Schedule II or III or IV but what we
pointed out to the individual who did the petition, is even if we did
that there's two things the Board could not do. The Board can not change
the criminal provision of the statutes and the legislature has, unlike
many controlled substances where a crime involves possessing some
certain amount of a Schedule II drug or a Schedule III drug or a
Schedule I drug, marijuana is specifically named in the criminal
sections of the statutes. So moving marijuana, for us, moving marijuana
out of Schedule I would have had no impact on the fact that it would
have still been crime. And there are two sections of Section 152, the
Controlled Substances Act, that are under the Board's purview that were
implicated as well and those are in here, that's 152.11 and 152.12. And
what we pointed out to the gentleman who petitioned us is that even if
we moved it into Schedule II those sections require, or state, that
Scheduled drugs can only be dispensed based on the prescription of a
prescriber and they can only be dispensed by a licensed pharmacies or
practitioners so basically we pointed out even if we moved it out of the
Schedules it would be pointless because nobody could prescribe it and
nobody would prescribe it and nobody, because it is still a felony under
federal law to sell marijuana, is going to take the risk to stock it in
their pharmacies to sell it. That's a little bit of the history.

So, do I believe that marijuana probably has some accepted medical uses,
again if you don't go with the definition of an FDA approved drug, yes.
And certainly some of the constituents do, CBD is one of the ingredients
that is in cannabis plants and it's just been approved, a version of it
has just been approved for use in seizures in children, and there have
been THC products approved by the FDA as well. So I guess, ultimately it
is up to the legislature to decide whether or not to move marijuana out
of the Schedules. I still don't think there would be any legal mechanism
for it to be sold because it would be a violation under federal law to
do that, so I think that is additional work that would need to be done.
In the long run I wouldn't disagree with those who say marijuana might
have some medical uses. Again, if you don't look very strictly at it
having to be an FDA approved use because marijuana has never been
approved for any medical purposes in and of itself, it has always been
an extract of marijuana that the FDA has approved.

Chair: Senator Dziedzic

Dziedzic: Thank you Mr. Chair. Thank you Dr. Wiberg. You might have seen
this, part of this language is already included in a Senator Dibble
bill, SF2198, and in that bill he did deal with some of the criminal
statute issues. Because I didn't think that was necessarily germane
since Senator Limmer's bill was just the scheduling, we just took the
scheduling portion to, again attempt to be germane, but again because I
do think that there is some medical value to it and Schedule I is
usually "no medicinal value", I think some of it might be symbolic to
say that we think there is some value. I personally wish the Feds would
allow some research because I think that would allow all of us to do a
little better in understanding what is good, what the different uses
are, and what the different doses are and I think that would be helpful
and so, with that, Mr. Chair I'll withdraw my amendment.