Hemp law fiasco shows need for bigger look at Iowa Cannabis laws
In 2025, Iowa lawmakers need to take a holistic look at cannabis and marijuana in all forms to decide what regulations actually contribute to safety.
Iowa’s overbearing regulation of cannabis products, including for supervised medical use, has produced impatience and frustration for years. Now it’s led the state into an avoidable dustup with consumers and retailers over how edible products that include the psychoactive ingredient THC can be packaged and sold.
The episode includes the specter of the government threatening to enforce rules it hasn’t managed to finish writing, which is one element of a pair of lawsuits.
Officials need to take steps now to help untangle all this. But in the bigger picture, the situation highlights the urgency of taking a fresh look at all of Iowa’s marijuana-related laws to see whether they’re truly protecting the public.
The chorus of voices on board with legal recreational use of marijuana now includes three of Iowa’s neighbors and Statehouse Democrats who proposed legislation last year to move Iowa in that direction. If Republicans can give a hearing to a plan to define “man” and “woman” in Iowa Code, they can hold a hearing in 2025 to at least listen to supporters on this topic, after the GOP presumably retains control of the Legislature. And, at a bare minimum, it’s time for lawmakers to peel back some red tape on both the medical cannabis program and hemp regulations.
After plodding changes in cannabis laws, hemp rules surprise businesses
Parents of children who suffer from debilitating seizures were among those who helped persuade legislators in 2014 to approve carefully circumscribed medicinal cannabis use. The succeeding decade has been defined by halting expansions of the program and disappointment from those who say the rules needlessly keep many Iowans from receiving therapeutic care. Gov. Kim Reynolds vetoed one expansion attempt in 2019.
In separate developments, the federal farm bill passed in 2018 took hemp, a type of cannabis plant with comparatively low concentrations of THC, off a list of controlled substances, opening the door for states to allow the production and sale of hemp products. Iowa passed such a law in 2019. Officials have said they were surprised that entrepreneurs were able to find room in the law to produce a bloom of edible products, including drinks, and use storefronts to sell them, including to children.
The Department of Public Safety asked lawmakers this year to add age restrictions, to limit the amount of THC that can be included in a container, and to give state agencies more enforcement authority. Lawmakers obliged; Gov. Kim Reynolds didn’t sign the bill until May 17 and in a written statement said, “I have concerns about this bill,” acknowledging that it could limit options for parents whose children suffer severe pain from seizures and other conditions.
That might have been that. But later in May, the Department of Health and Human Services started telling businesses that it would interpret the law to require a strict threshold on the amount of THC in a single container, even if the container obviously included more than one serving of the product. Under Iowa law, it takes several weeks after an agency gives notice of such rules before they formally take effect – in this case, it would be at least mid-July, even though the law in question would come into force July 1.
Business operators said that the rules went much further than the actual law and that some would have to scrap well over half their inventory. They sued; a federal judge said it wouldn’t be appropriate to immediately block the law or rules but ordered another hearing July 11. The Legislature’s Administrative Rules Review Committee is set to consider the hemp rules July 16.
Iowa falls behind its neighbors in removing red tape
Before House File 2605 passed, state Rep. Steve Holt, a Denison Republican, correctly said that retailers should have realized the legal landscape for edible hemp could shift suddenly. But the rules fiasco goes some distance beyond that – and, more saliently, it wouldn’t have been necessary at all if Iowa hadn’t been so plodding in its acceptance of cannabis.
The THC limit in the new hemp law was set in part to be lower than the THC limit for the medical cannabis program. That makes sense, too – but in noting the comparison, lawmakers decided to fix the wrong problem. The medical program’s rules keep it from helping all manner of Iowans. There are only five official dispensaries, forcing patients to drive long distances to get their medication (a bill to change that did not advance this year). Only certain illnesses are eligible for cannabis prescriptions.
Iowa needs to trust doctors more. While Illinois, Minnesota and Missouri are ironing out details of letting their residents make choices about recreational marijuana use, Iowa continues to exactingly specify what choices expert physicians are allowed to make.
As for consumable hemp, the new age restrictions clearly were necessary, and some rules about marketing are acceptable. But the paternalism in deciding to, at the last minute, blow up retailers’ existing dosing and packaging practices is a disappointing misfire.
Without downplaying those substantive problems, the procedural issues that prompted the lawsuits are perplexing, too. It’s not unusual for legislation to leave specific details to the rulemaking process carried out by the executive branch. But if the state can’t fill in the details by July 1 for a bill signed in mid-May, lawmakers ought to in the future consider delaying effective dates. It's nothing less than government malpractice to pass a vague law and then not finish the rules businesses must follow until after the law goes into effect.
This case illustrates the pitfalls of rushed work in general – although House File 2605 was passed with due deliberation, the Legislature’s final-days-of-session practice of rewriting bills from scratch hours before voting can’t help but lead to sloppy mistakes. This year, for example that meant Reynolds had to veto a well-meaning but dangerously ambiguous bill about public meetings.
At the July 11 hearing, federal Judge Stephanie Rose indicated some sympathy for retailers' legal arguments but is not expected to issue any rulings until at least late July. The Administrative Rules Review Committee should tell the Health and Human Services Department to start over, crafting rules that don't go beyond the language of the law. The law as it's written can govern in the meantime. And, in 2025, ideally in January and February, Iowa lawmakers need to take a holistic look at cannabis and marijuana in all forms to decide what regulations actually contribute to safety.
