(gentle music) - 27 years after the first state legalized medical marijuana, Nebraska remains one of a dozen states that is yet to allow the use of cannabis for medical reasons.

With yet another push to put the topic in front of voters next year to change beyond the way, we will discuss that tonight on "Speaking of Nebraska."

(upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - Thanks for joining us on "Speaking of Nebraska."

I'm Nebraska Public Media News director, Jay Omar.

Nebraskans for medical marijuana recently launched a renewed attempt to allow voters to decide on medical marijuana.

Petition drives have been unsuccessful in the past for varying reasons, and bills in the legislature have been unable to gain traction Over the next half hour, we'll talk to advocates who believe allowing medical marijuana would benefit many.

And we talked to those who were concerned with the idea of legalization.

But first, Nebraska Public Media wanted to know about how Nebraskans feel about the highly debated topic.

Jolie Peal has this story.

- [Jolie] Researchers at the University of Nebraska Lincoln have been asking Nebraskans about their opinions on medical marijuana since 2020.

The response has been consistent the last three years.

Around 83% of people support it.

Patrick Habecker, a research assistant professor for the Rural Drug Addiction Research Center says the survey asks respondents if they support recreational and medical marijuana, if they support only medical marijuana or if they don't support legalizing any kind of marijuana.

- And we did that as an attempt to sort of get a better handle on what is the statewide opinion and feelings towards this and what they think should be legal or not.

- [Jolie] The survey goes out to 8,000 households.

Researchers split the state into eight regions of 1,000 households.

For every 1,000 households, about 250 to 300 had someone respond to the survey.

- The lack of surprise would be that there isn't a big difference by area.

So when we look at the behavioral health region so the panhandle doesn't look super different from what we see around Lincoln or Omaha or what we see in sort of the North region.

There's a fairly strong level of agreement that medical marijuana should be the legal option for the substance in the state.

- [Jolie] He also says there aren't differences across party lines.

The party differences come in with opinions on recreational marijuana.

Habecker says Republicans are more likely to be against recreational use.

Along with asking about people's opinions on medical marijuana, researchers asked if the respondent would use medical marijuana if it was legal.

About 30% of respondents said yes.

- So there's clearly a market of folks who are interested in this and are looking forward to taking advantage of this sort of medical product.

And I think- - [Jolie] Earlier this year, the US Department of Health and Human Services recommended that marijuana be reclassified as a Schedule III drug instead of Schedule I under the Controlled Substances Act.

A timeline for when that will happen isn't set but a decision is likely to come before the 2024 presidential election.

Habecker says this would show there's a medical justification for marijuana.

- And I think that gives a lot of backing towards attempts for medical marijuana specifically.

'Cause it's then saying the federal government now recognizes there are medical uses for this.

Why isn't this represented at the state level?

- Nebraskans for medical marijuana tried to get the topic on the ballot in 2020 and 2022.

In 2020, the initiative gathered enough signatures but was tossed out by the Supreme Court.

In 2022, the effort faced financial issues and didn't get enough signatures.

For Nebraska Public Media News, I'm Jolie Peal.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music) - Joining us now is Dr. Ned Calonge.

He's the Chief Medical Officer for the Colorado Department of Health and Environment.

Medical marijuana was instituted in Colorado in the early 2000s.

Dr. Calonge, this is the second time you've served in this role, the first being in the early 2000s.

Can you tell us a little bit about what that looked like in the years after it was brought through by the voters and how it was instituted?

- Yeah, there's so many changes in that time period.

When the registry first opened, there were 94 patients.

By the time, 2004, we started looking at it, it got up to 2,000 and then there were decisions made by our Board of Health, the Obama administration and it ballooned to well over 150,000 in a single six-month period of time.

So there were a lot of changes that occurred.

And then in 2014, the Colorado voters legalized recreational marijuana and the registry changed again.

- [Jay] So fast forward to 2023, how does medical cannabis as an option for patients in Colorado look now and are there any challenges or hiccups?

- Well, there are now just over 66,000 patients on the registry.

I think after all those years and now with the more manageable number.

There are many fewer challenges associated with the medical marijuana program.

- [Jay] And how often is medical marijuana prescribed compared to other drugs?

- [Ned] It's important to recognize that it's not legal to prescribe marijuana.

It remains a Schedule I drug by the DEA administration.

So no physician in the US can prescribe it.

I know that sounds like a detail but what we do is we diagnose a qualifying condition for which medical marijuana may be recommended.

And so on the whole, we would say there are 66,000 people in Colorado who are on the registry for whom that determination has been made.

- And you touched on that and it's a good detail to add 'cause that's the type of conversation I was hoping to get into.

And what are some of those conditions that you commonly see fall under that umbrella?

- Well, they have to be approved.

And the original constitutional amendment took them right off of the Oregon list.

So it was cancer, HIV or AIDs, seizures, nausea, severe pain.

And then the legislature specifically added PTSD in 2017 and autism spectrum disorder in 2019.

So that's kind of the list that we have to work with.

And it's specified in constitution and law.

- This conversation and debate has been happening around other states and, you know medical marijuana's legalized in some, still being discussed in others.

Is there anything that you feel might be a misconception in other states as this topic is discussed that you've seen play out differently than might be in the national conversation?

- I think, well, let me say a couple things.

First of all, I have to admit that the bad things that we thought would happen like increase in motor vehicle accidents, crashes, I'm sorry, and increase in use are things that as we looked past the recreational use increase we really didn't see.

I think when we didn't have recreational use, the medical marijuana program became the defacto route of getting recreational marijuana because all you had to do is have a clinician say that you had one of the qualifying conditions and you could get a registry card.

So that's just something that I think states who are thinking about it wanna understand about how to implement it in a way that stays kind of true to the concept of medical use.

The other thing is that it does kinda set the stage of thinking about marijuana as medicine and that is associated with people thinking about marijuana differently.

And I think does add a little layer of greater acceptability to it.

One of the untoward effects that we have seen is that we've seen use increase in pregnant women to kind of combat with morning sickness.

And the issue is that we do believe that there are potential harms associated with smoking during pregnancy or breastfeeding.

And so the concept that it's natural and medicine is something that we're always working against in making those recommendations.

- Dr. Calonge, I really appreciate you making time for us today.

I know you're a busy man, but your insight is very welcomed in this discussion, so thank you very much.

- Thank you for having me.

- Next we sit down with John Kuehn, a former state senator and co-chair of Smart Approaches to Marijuana, Nebraska.

We will discuss why he feels legalization isn't in the state's best interest and he isn't alone.

When asked about the latest initiative, Nebraska Governor Jim Pillen said in a statement quote, "I believe in protecting our kids, the legalization of marijuana poses demonstrated harm to our children.

Access to medical marijuana should only happen if it has undergone the FDA-approved process."

(upbeat music) - I am joined by John Kuehn.

co-chair of Smart Approaches to Marijuana Nebraska.

Thanks for joining us today.

- Thank you.

- John, so we'll start off simple.

Do you believe medical marijuana should be legal in Nebraska?

- No, I do not.

Marijuana legalization is based upon a couple of myths which have been widely promoted to the public under the guise of medicine.

The first being that marijuana has some sort of medicinal purpose, which is can treat or effectively cure any disease which the evidence does not support.

And the second is that marijuana is a benign or a safe drug which we know from overwhelming evidence and increasing body of evidence due to the legalization experiment in other states, that that simply isn't the case.

And so when it comes to legalization of a drug like marijuana, we have to balance what the protect projected benefits are with the projected harms.

And the evidence of the harms of marijuana legalization and the commercial industry that comes along with it far outweigh any alleged benefits that may be there.

- Speaking of evidence, research along those lines, a recent recommendation was put forth to make marijuana a Schedule III drug as opposed to a Schedule I drug which allow more research to go into it.

What type of research would you like to see go into something like medical marijuana?

- You know, any drug or compound that is utilized for medicinal purposes should go through a rigorous evaluation process to prove like with any other medicine or drug, its efficacy and its safety, giving clear guidelines, for how it should be used, and how it can be used by both patients and prescribers in a safe and effective method.

The challenge with marijuana is that plant-based marijuana as a dispensary based product has never been shown to have any efficacy for the treatment or cure of any single disease or disorder.

There are specific compounds in the marijuana plant which have been investigated and have shown promise for certain very limited conditions.

For example, CBD or cannabidiol with application for very specific types of seizure disorders as well as for spasticity associated with multiple sclerosis.

The issue of rescheduling is an interesting one 'cause currently, scheduled as a Schedule I drug.

It's been determined by the Drug Enforcement Administration to or accepted medical purposes.

To jump to a Schedule III classification bypasses Schedule II where most of our drugs and compounds which have a high abuse potential which marijuana does, are located.

So think opioids and others are Schedule II compounds.

Rescheduling is certainly a discussion that I think should be had especially in light of interest in further exploring compounds within the marijuana product.

And it would open a pathway for FDA approval.

Going to Schedule III is just simply a step too far.

Looking at rescheduling to Schedule II and then all of the regulations that would come around the use of that product is obviously something that is worth consideration and discussion.

- You've spoken on this topic a lot throughout your career.

What makes you so passionate about what you believe here?

Kids.

Marijuana and its impact on a community is disproportionately borne by two populations, the vulnerable and by children.

When we look at the normalization due to the commercial industry of the marijuana industry and the commercialization of this business, the target audience and those that have the most negative impacts are children.

30% of high school seniors report having used marijuana in the last 12 months.

6% of those seniors report having used marijuana in the last 30 days.

What we do know about the harms of marijuana that are clear is the impacts on the developing brain, particularly the risk associated with mental illness, with cannabis use disorder, with cannabis emesis disorder.

And when we look at the risk and the challenges already faced by today's youth with mental health, with substance abuse, adding in the normalization and developing a commercial industry which expands that risk is simply a step too far.

In my earlier career as a college professor I actually observed a student in a classroom setting undergo a psychotic break.

He was a student from California that had a medical marijuana card for anxiety and sleeplessness and had been self-administering, which is part of the process in this dispensary model.

And he had a very public psychotic break that required emergency room sedation to get under control in a 72-hour psych hold.

When you see and observe those kinds of impacts of marijuana use, has a lasting impact and can make you very passionate about the subject.

- John, in one sentence, what would you say to somebody who's undecided on this topic?

Look at the evidence and the evidence is clear.

The harms of marijuana commercialization and legalization far outweigh any demonstrated scientific benefit.

- Thank you so much for taking the time today.

I really appreciate you being here.

- [John] Thank you.

- Just ahead, we're joined by Lancaster County Sheriff Terry Wagner who filed the lawsuit in 2020 that led to the medical marijuana initiative not appearing on the ballot despite receiving enough signatures.

(upbeat music) - Welcome back to "Speaking of Nebraska."

I'm joined today by Lancaster County Sheriff Terry Wagner.

Sheriff Wagner has served in his role for almost 30 years and joins us to talk about the push for medical marijuana in Nebraska.

-Thanks so much for joining us.

-You bet, glad to be here.

- Thank you.

- Nebraska is only one of 12 states that does not allow medical marijuana.

Do you believe that it should remain illegal in Nebraska?

- I do.

First off, marijuana's not medicine, but think more importantly, if and when there's proper testing done on marijuana and it's determined to be instead of Schedule I narcotic that it's determined to be and have medicinal value, then I think things should progress like any other pharmaceutical drug.

So I think it should follow the same procedures that all other drugs follow.

- From a law enforcement perspective, would legalizing medical marijuana present any challenges in your opinion?

- Well, it would because obviously, if you contact someone with marijuana then you know, you have to determine whether they're possessing it legally through for medicinal purposes or whether it's possessed for illicit purposes.

So yeah, it's gonna present some challenges there but nothing that can't be overcome.

- Have you ever talked with law enforcement leaders in other states where medical marijuana is legalized and have they ever discussed any challenges or anything with the implementation?

- I went to a conference in Colorado in January of 2015 and so they had medicinal marijuana in I think 2008 and then they legalized it for recreational purposes in 2014 and it took effect in 2015.

And they talked about the challenges of transitioning from medicinal to recreational and what they've learned from it.

But what they said was that was it was such a scam because the majority of people in Colorado who were using medicinal marijuana were males between the ages of 21 and 38.

There were only a handful of doctors, I'm gonna say less than 30, that were prescribing 90% of the medicinal marijuana.

So if you found one of these doctors, you could go and say, "I've got chronic pain," and they would write you a script for marijuana and you could get it.

And so that was really as simple as it got.

- In 2020 when there was a ballot initiative to legalize medical marijuana, you filed a lawsuit challenging the petition, eventually led to the Nebraska Supreme Court not placing it on the ballot.

Can you tell us a little bit about what led to you filing that lawsuit?

- Well, interestingly enough, I was contacted by an attorney who had a client that wanted to challenge that ballot initiative.

And the premise was that the ballot initiative didn't meet the single issue criteria and that it contained more than that and should have been struck down.

And the client of this attorney really wanted a law enforcement officer to be the driving force behind this and preferably sheriff because we're elected.

And so I agreed to do that.

And I was the signatory on that lawsuit.

- And the last question I have for you, so almost three decades serving in your role in Lancaster County, a more general question, how have you seen the usage and prevalence of marijuana in general change over that timeframe?

- If you talk to people my age who may have been a user of marijuana back in their late teens or 20s, THC content was very low.

With the advances in the botany botany and the plant sciences and so forth, there's marijuana being produced with upward to 20 25% THC.

So it's a much stronger product.

We're seeing a lot more young people using marijuana and almost without exception, if we arrest somebody for a hard narcotic like methamphetamine, cocaine, heroin they're probably gonna have marijuana with them.

So it's an addition to.

- Sheriff Wagner, thank you so much for joining us today.

I really appreciate you taking the time to discuss this issue and yeah, have a conversation about it.

- [Terry] Okay, thank you very much.

- Yeah.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music) - Earlier, we learned that roughly 30% of respondents to surveys about medical marijuana say they would be interested in using cannabis products in some way if legalized.

One of those people would be Marcie Reed, but not for herself.

Instead, she's been fighting for medical marijuana legalization on behalf of her son, Kyler.

Nebraska Public Media's Jolie Peal sat down with them to hear their story.

- Like this.

- [Jolie] Kyler Reed is just like any other 10-year-old.

He likes playing with puzzles and blocks.

He loves playing video games and one day, he wants to be a YouTube star.

- But now, I'm a Roblox Pro.

(laughter) - [Jolie] And he was student of the week at school.

- There'll be a Roblox Pro like.

- [Jolie] But there's something that sets Kyler apart from his peers.

He has to take nine medications a day.

Kyler's mom, Marcie Reed, says his health concern started when he was only five years old.

First, he wasn't talking.

That was Marcie's first sign that something might be wrong.

The Reed family was able to get Kyler the help he needed and he started talking.

But in 2018, Marcie got a phone call at work.

Kyler had a seizure at school.

- You know when you don't know what's going on with your kid, you like, that's the scariest part.

You want the answers and you want them now.

- [Jolie] Originally, Marcie was told they would have to wait months to get in with the neurologist but an opening came up so they took Kyler to have testing done.

- They were like kinda scanning my brain to try to see what was going on.

- [Jolie] But doctors didn't know what was going on.

So they started Kyler on a combination of medicines.

Marcie says that insurance covers some of them but others, they have to pay out of pocket.

One medication cost them $1,000 a month, but they were able to use a coupon to make it more affordable.

- [Marcie] I could not imagine if we had to keep being on that every month because it was with another medicine too.

So it's not just the $1,000, it's the $1,000 plus the rest of the meds.

- [Jolie] This all led to her joining the Medical Marijuana Petition Drive.

She says she just wants options for her son.

Options that don't include nine medications with their own set of side effects.

- [Marcie] Like with the oil, you could give him an oil or a gummy and that would be so much better on him.

I sat there and I would tell the pharmacist when we were trying to go through all the different meds.

I was like, "This is a lot of meds for him.

He's little."

- [Jolie] Marcie has met other parents through the petition process whose kids have seizures that medications don't help at all.

Nebraskans for medical marijuana has two petitions circulating.

The first covers protections for patients, healthcare practitioners, and caregivers.

The second, Marcie says, covers everything else from the manufacturer to the delivery.

The petition also calls for the creation of a Nebraska Medical Cannabis Commission that would help regulate medical marijuana in the state.

- [Marcie] It's the people that need it medically that can't get it.

The people that already want to do it find a way to do it.

- [Jolie] For Kyler, Marcie says medical marijuana could bring his medicine count down.

She told us she'll never stop fighting for her son to have the choice.

To help make that happen, Marcie is out getting signatures whenever she can, even at our interview.

And while Marcie is doing the petition, Kyler is doing his job being a kid.

For Nebraska Public Media News, I'm Jolie Peal.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music) - Welcome back to "Speaking of Nebraska."

I am joined today by Crista Eggers campaign manager for Nebraskans for Medical Marijuana.

Thanks for joining us today.

- Absolutely.

Thanks for having me.

- This is the third attempt over the that past few years to get medical marijuana in front of voters.

What makes this attempt different?

- Yeah, so you know, the previous two ballot attempts that we went after, we saw that Nebraskans support this issue.

Overwhelmingly, the support is out there.

You know, we had a 2020 overturning that initiative after a single subject violation that the Supreme Court of Nebraska ruled on.

And then last time, we had to do it strictly grassroots.

We lost funding and came incredibly close to qualifying last time.

So this go around, we're starting early.

This is too important of an issue to walk away from.

The state legislative body has not acted on this.

So the ballot is the only option and we believe that's the best option for Nebraska.

- Crista, what makes you so passionate about this effort?

Yeah, so I had my youngest son, Colton, who is now nine.

Several years ago, he began experiencing epileptic seizures.

And at the time, we had gone through every medication, every combination treatment, he wasn't a surgical candidate and so his doctors outta state mentioned medical cannabis.

And of course when we said, "Tell us more about it."

They said, "We can't, you don't live in a legal state so you should go back home, move or get it legalized."

And I chose the latter and it has become something that's not just about my child but about so many Nebraskans who are hurting.

- What does a timeline look moving forward for the petition drive?

- Yeah, so we are actively collecting signatures.

We're going into counties across the state.

We will continue the signature gathering process until July 3rd of '24.

So we have approximately nine months ahead of us to get those signatures.

And then after that, we're hopeful we will be certified for the ballot and this will appear before voters in November of '24.

- There was a recent recommendation to change the classification of marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III.

This would allow a lot more research to be done.

And question do you would be, what type of research would you like to see done and what benefits do you think that would provide making a change like that?

- Yeah, so I definitely think that does need to happen.

You know, we know from research being done in other countries that there is something real about cannabis and the ability that it has to alleviate certain ailments, you know, help certain ailments.

And so I most definitely think we need to further study that here in the United States.

I also think, you know, like many people, it never should have been scheduled as it has.

And I think that's prevented us from, again, getting help to people who need it because it remains at Schedule I.

- Earlier in the show, we heard from Dr. Calonge and he said that one thing he saw in Colorado was a tendency in the early days of legalized medical marijuana for people to try to use it as for recreational use.

How do you combat that with a push for medical marijuana?

- Yeah, so you know, to be really honest, I think most people would say that marijuana, you know, is here.

If someone wants to access marijuana recreationally, they can.

There are shops right now that are completely unregulated selling Delta-8 and THCA, all these different things that there's no regulation or oversight on.

And so I would say, you know unfortunately, the people that don't have access the one group is very, very sick individuals and children.

And that is most definitely why we need a medical system.

What comes in the future?

I don't know.

I know that we've been advocating for 10 years now to get a narrow conservative bill across in Nebraska and we're still here fighting.

- My last question for you.

What would you say to someone who's undecided on this issue?

- I would ask them to think about the person in their life that they love the most and imagine watching them suffer every single day.

And knowing that nothing that you can do, nothing that you can try, nothing a doctor can prescribe or treat is gonna change that.

And there is something out there that if you lived on a boundary of another state here and another state here, another state there, you would have an option and consider that and what you would be doing and what you'd be fighting for.

- Crista, thank you so much for joining us today.

I really appreciate your time.

- Thanks for having me.

- Of course.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music) - That's all for this week on "Speaking of Nebraska."

Thank you to all of our guests.

Next week, we will take a look at the education landscape in Nebraska and what high schools and colleges are doing to keep local students in the state.

I'm Nebraska Public Media News director, Jay Omar.

Have a great night.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music)