Legalizing marijuana is a “no-brainer” move to help ward off a “fiscal time bomb” in Iowa that could otherwise lead to cuts in funding for education and public safety in the state, the Democratic candidate for governor says.
“I think we should treat it the way we treat alcohol. That seems like a no-brainer to me, right?” Rob Sand, the Democratic gubernatorial nominee, said at a town hall event in Dallas County on Wednesday in response to a question from a voter who said Iowa is “losing money” to other states that have legalized cannabis.
“Alcohol is a dangerous drug. You shouldn’t abuse it. Also, we’re not going to throw you in prison for having a beer,” Sand said. “Why is it any different for marijuana? It is a dangerous drug. You shouldn’t abuse it. We shouldn’t be throwing people in prison just for using it.”
The Democratic candidate said that “when I say treat it like alcohol, I literally mean treat it like alcohol.”
He then went through a list of common objections to cannabis legalization and explained how he would respond to them.
“So when I hear people say, ‘Well, I don’t want to smell it.’ Same. You shouldn’t be allowed to smoke it in public. Simple rule: you can’t drink alcohol in public, right?
People say, ‘Well, I’m worried about kids. I’ve heard cases in Colorado where they got colorful gummies, and the kids find them, and then the kids get sick.’ I agree. You shouldn’t be able to market it to children. You shouldn’t be able to use colorful designs on your packages. And if you’re doing gummies, they can look like an eraser, right? They don’t need to be red and blue and green and look like gummy bears.
People say, ‘Well, I don’t know, Rob. It’s a lot stronger than the stuff that I was smoking in the 70s.’ To which I say, ‘I wasn’t there. Whatever you say, I believe you.’ I don’t have a basis for comparison then or now. I actually haven’t used it. But how do we handle that with alcohol? When you buy a beer, you can see what the alcohol content is on the beer, right? We treat hard liquor differently, but you can see when you buy hard liquor what the content is on that, and that way you know what you’re getting into. We can do that with marijuana as well.”
Sand, who is currently Iowa’s state auditor, said the state currently has a budget surplus, but that annual spending is overtaking revenue.
“I call this a fiscal time bomb. Our budget is nine and a half billion,” he said. “Imagine the cuts to public education and to public safety if we don’t take action to fix this.”
“So we need to do something now,” he said, arguing that legalizing marijuana is “one of the things that we should do.”
“We would have hundreds of millions of dollars every single year if we just treat marijuana the way we treat alcohol,” Sand said, adding that the thinks the state should also put an income limit on school vouchers and make data centers pay fair taxes.
“All three of those would save us hundreds of millions of dollars a year alone,” he said. “So if we do all three of them, we do them right away, all of a sudden, our time horizon on how long that surplus is going to last gets a lot longer, and we can think about other ways to help address that and get back to having a balanced budget.”
Sand also spoke about his support for legalizing marijuana at an earlier event last month, saying that he thinks cannabis should be legalized and treated like alcohol, even if he thinks it’s “dangerous.”
“Marijuana is a dangerous drug,” he said at the time. “You shouldn’t abuse it, but we also shouldn’t throw people in prison just for using it. We should treat it the way we treat alcohol. Alcohol is a dangerous drug. You shouldn’t abuse it, but we don’t throw you in prison just for having a beer when you get home.”
The Democratic gubernatorial candidate said that Iowa is “spending perfectly good tax dollars to lock people up” for marijuana while people who want to use it are driving across the border to purchase it in other states.
“They’re spending their money in Illinois, or they’re spending it in Missouri. And then they’re driving back without their money,” Sand said. “The money stays there, and the tax dollars stay there.”
Republican gubernatorial nominee Zach Lahn reportedly opposes legalizing cannabis but doesn’t appear to have spoken extensively about the issue.
Josh Turek, the Democratic nominee in a U.S. Senate race, said this month that cannabis’s longtime restrictive Schedule I status is “ridiculous.” Marijuana “should be legalized and regulated, and let’s tax it,” he said.
Meanwhile, Iowa regulators are circulating proposed rules changes to remove the residency requirement for patients in the state’s medical cannabis program while also ensuring that military veterans qualify for reduced registration fees.
The residency-focused part of the regulatory change from the state Department of Health and Human Services is meant to comply with provisions of a bill that Reynolds signed into law in June.
In addition to allowing out-of-state residents to register in the medical cannabis program if they have a certification from an Iowa healthcare provider legislation, that legislation also doubles the number of medical cannabis dispensaries that are allowed to operate in the state.
Regulators said in the new rule filing that removing the residency requirement is expected to “primarily impact qualified Nebraska residents since Nebraska is the only bordering state that does not currently have an operational medical or adult-use cannabis program.”
“Although Nebraska has taken steps to establish a medical cannabidiol program, implementation has experienced significant delays and setbacks,” the regulatory explanation says.
Beyond the residency change that is part of the bill the governor signed this year, the new rule change also restores regulatory language that was “inadvertently removed during the 2023 Red Tape Review process” that allowed proof of military veteran status to be used to qualify for a reduced patient application fee of $25 instead of the standard $100.
Under prior law, Iowa’s limited medical marijuana program allowed only five dispensaries. That has doubled to 10 under HF 990, which the governor signed.
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The Iowa Medical Cannabidiol Board, which oversees the state’s medical marijuana program, recommended in a 2023 report that the state allow more licenses “in an effort to provide Iowans with greater geographical access to medical cannabis products.”
Under the program, patients with certain conditions can obtain cannabis products containing no more than at 4.5 grams of THC every 90 days. Flower and smoking are not allowed. Healthcare practitioners can allow greater amounts of THC for patients who are terminally ill or who have experience with the program and for whom the provider believes 4.5 grams is not enough.
Separately this session, Iowa lawmakers considered a bill to create a state-regulated therapeutic psilocybin program for patients with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Last year, the governor vetoed earlier legislation that would have allowed doctors in the state to immediately prescribe a synthetic form of psilocybin in the event of federal approval of the psychedelic substance by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), arguing that it “surrenders state authority to make an informed determination about classification to federal officials.”
