Carol deProsse and Caroline Dieterle

Writers Group

The Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. Territory, legalized marijuana last month and Canada will have legal marijuana by the middle of this month. Citizen-generated marijuana reform is rolling across the US: 55% of the U.S. population now live in areas where marijuana is either legalized or decriminalized. How much longer must Iowa wait?

The 1936 propaganda film "Reefer Madness" falsely showed marijuana smokers being afflicted by lunacy. Iowa’s current reefer madness is the legislature’s failure to modernize its marijuana laws, leaving many Iowans to suffer needlessly and depriving the state’s treasury of the tax dollars that would be generated by legalizing marijuana, money that could be used for education, water quality, and infrastructure. Instead many Iowans pay fines and may serve jail time for doing what is legal in other states. Medical marijuana has been shown to be a helpful tool in the effort to reduce opioid abuse and addiction, and Iowa has an opioid problem.

Iowans are at the mercy of their own state government’s structure: unlike 26 other states and the District of Columbia, Iowa doesn’t have an Initiative and referendum process, therefore, statewide petitioning to propose relief via a statewide ballot measure isn’t possible. Additionally, local governments are prevented from passing ordinances to decriminalize marijuana, because no jurisdiction is allowed to pass a measure that is less restrictive than state law.

Last year, the Republican-majority legislature minimally enlarged the list of complaints for which medical marijuana can be administered; the list remains overly restrictive, failing to include many ailments from which sufferers in other states can find relief. The processes for growing and distributing medical marijuana in Iowa are bogged down in a tangle of red tape that is leaving physicians reluctant to write prescriptions. In contrast, Oklahoma’s 2018 marijuana law leaves the determination of qualifying conditions to patients’ physicians, with no restrictions, thereby giving marijuana the same status as other prescription medications.

Iowa’s marijuana penalties are some of the most severe in the nation: a jail sentence of six months to two years and a fine of $1,000 to $6,250 for possession of any amount. Additionally, these laws are being used to racially discriminate by incarcerating non-white people in disproportionate numbers: whites’ and non-whites’ rates of marijuana usage are the same.

Ten states (Colorado, California, Washington, Alaska, Maine, Massachusetts, Nevada, Oregon, Vermont, and Rhode Island) and the District of Columbia have legalized marijuana; nearly one-fourth of the total U.S. population live in those places.

Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, New Hampshire, and Ohio have entirely decriminalized marijuana use; North Carolina, New York, Nebraska, Missouri, and Mississippi have decriminalized the first and second offense.

In states where usage is still criminalized overall, many cities have passed local decriminalization ordinances, so that their residents are freed from the fear of incarceration resulting from marijuana possession, though fines, sometimes large, still apply. Examples of these cities are: Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, San Antonio, Dallas, Austin, Columbus, Milwaukee, Baltimore, Albuquerque, and 20 cities in Michigan. Some of the states in which other cities decriminalized marijuana usage later legalized it.

Legalization is on the November 2018 ballot in North Dakota and Michigan. New Jersey, New York, Oklahoma, and Delaware appear poised to legalize either legislatively or through a petitioning process. In Wisconsin this November 16 counties and several cities will vote on advisory referendum questions approved by county boards or city councils on legalization of marijuana; it’s hoped the results will lead to legalization in Wisconsin. Iowa should put a similar question on its ballot. The February 2018 Iowa Poll showed that 78% of Iowans favor medical marijuana; those favoring recreational use is steadily increasing.

Iowa is one of only 11 states not permitting the cultivation of hemp, a cash crop that can be used in thousands of products. State Senator Kevin Kinney, D-Oxford is working on legislation to change this. Kinney says, “That would be an economic driver for rural Iowa and be able to create some jobs in rural Iowa.”

While the Iowa legislature is making Iowa a prohibition backwater, the costs of law enforcement, incarceration, and lost tax dollars that legalization could bring continue to accrue: a ‘lose-lose-lose situation’. Considering the increasingly permissive Iowa laws regarding gambling and drinking, Iowa should relax and legalize marijuana.

Writers Group members Carol deProsse and Caroline Dieterle live and write in Iowa City.