The Republican candidate running to be Iowa’s next governor says members of his own family benefit from the use of medical cannabis and he supports expanding access to it—but he opposes broader legalization of recreational marijuana.
“I think my stance on on marijuana is very simple. I believe in plant-based medicines 100 percent,” Zach Lahn said on Wednesday. “I have people in my family, I have friends that benefit from this—whether it’s PTSD, anxiety, whatever it might be.”
The GOP gubernatorial nominee added, however, that “every decision we make like this is a vote towards what we want to see in the culture of our state”—and what he saw while attending college in Colorado, where adult-use marijuana is legal, is “not what I want for the state of Iowa.”
“But I do want to increase access to medical marijuana across the state,” Lahn said. “Right now, it’s far too restricted, and we do need to open up so people who need it can get it.”
When it comes to full legalization of marijuana, though, the Republican candidate claimed that the “financial benefits have been overstated” and the “social impacts have been understated.”
“It is not a panacea. It’s not something that’s going to solve all the budget problems,” he said. “And we have to also understand that it also is a cultural decision. What do we want for it as a state? And while I want to see it expanded greatly, I’m not in favor of full legalization.”
Watch Lahn’s cannabis comments, starting around 7:45 into the video below:
Lahn’s opponent in the governor’s race, Democrat Rob Sand, however, supports legalizing recreational marijuana and has consistently argued on the campaign trail that it can be part of the solution to Iowa’s budget issues.
“If we tax cannabis the way we tax alcohol and treat it the way we treat alcohol, that would be a positive move for the state’s budget,”he said during a debate last week.
“I also think it would be a positive move for law enforcement—taking some of the burden off of their backs,” the Democratic gubernatorial candidate said. “Every time I talk to police officers, they’d rather deal with someone who was using cannabis than someone who was drunk.”
“And look, these are both dangerous drugs,” Sand said. “The bottom line is, we don’t want to be throwing people in prison just for using them.”
Sand separately said last month that legalizing marijuana is a “no-brainer” move to help forestall a “fiscal time bomb” in Iowa that could otherwise lead to cuts in funding for education and public safety in the state.
“I think we should treat it the way we treat alcohol. That seems like a no-brainer to me, right?” the Democratic gubernatorial nominee, who is currently the state auditor, said at a town hall event.
“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.”
Sand also spoke about his support for legalizing marijuana at an earlier event in August, 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.”
Sand also recently praised President Donald Trump’s administration for taking steps to federally reschedule cannabis.
“I’m someone who has always been willing to call the good ‘good,’” he said. “I was really glad to see the Trump administration move towards making marijuana more accessible for medical purposes. I’m a believer that it should be treated the way we treat alcohol. And so when they did it, I said, ‘Good for them.’”
Josh Turek, the Democratic nominee in a U.S. Senate race in Iowa, said last 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 Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) 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.
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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.”
Photo courtesy of Brian Shamblen.
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