“Disabled Iowans are not criminals,” read a sign at the Iowa Board of Pharmacy’s third public hearing on medical marijuana.

The hearing, held at the University of Iowa Oct. 7, brought out doctors, nurses, patients, advocates and even Iowa Senator Joe Bolkcom to present scientific and anecdotal evidence supporting the medical use of marijuana.

According to Jimmy Morrison, who received a grant from the Marijuana Policy Project to organize patients and advocates, “only 1.5” out of roughly 30 speakers testified against medical marijuana at the hearing, with the half going to Ron Herman, a clinical associate professor at the University of Iowa College of Pharmacy.

“Bottom line: there is evidence for the benefits (of medical marijuana),” Herman said, adding that there is little benefit in relationship to the adverse affects of smoking it.

The rest of the opposition went to Jennifer Husmann, a certified prevention specialist with the Area Substance Abuse Council.

“Marijuana continues to be the most abused illegal drug in ASAC’s five-county area in eastern Iowa,” Husmann said. “Overall drug use is down by more than a third in the last 20 years … Why would we want to wipe out our progress?”

Ray Lakers, who suffers from multiple sclerosis and admits to using marijuana, claims that marijuana helps him function normally.

Lakers also gave a poetic prose detailing the situation he and others like him are put in.

“Now, we are here, and I am here, to bring tear after tear. All of us living in fear,” he said, fighting back his own tears, “because patients are being denied a choice.”

The choice Lakers said he is denied is the ability to choose medical marijuana over other doctor prescribed medications.

He was not alone in admitting his use of marijuana for relief from his condition.

Lisa Jackson, a Crawfordsville resident and sufferer of fibromyalgia, also testified to the medical benefits she receives from marijuana.

Her disease, which is categorized by chronic pain and a heightened sensitivity to pressure, has left her in such pain that at times even the opiates she is legally prescribed cannot relieve her discomfort.

After contemplating suicide, Jackson tried marijuana and has “been smoking marijuana ever since,” she said.

“I don’t want to be associated with cocaine and meth or whatever,” she continued. “I just want some pain relief. I want some relief. I want to live. I want to be allowed to live. I want to be allowed to be a mother. I want to be allowed to be a wife. And I want to be allowed to be a good person and smoking marijuana allows me to do that. Is it worth going to jail? For me, it is … I don’t have any other options.

“I will continue to smoke,” she ended. “And I don’t have a problem with it.”

Her testimony came after Larry Quigly, a resident of Cedar Falls, told the board from his wheelchair that seven months ago he wasn’t a proponent of medical marijuana. His spinal cord injury, which has left him wheelchair-bound for the last 28 years, causes him to have chronic muscle spasms and muscle tightness. But after trying marijuana, which he and his podiatrist now call “the treatment,” his spasms improved and his muscles relaxed.

However, because marijuana is still illegal in Iowa, he has stopped using it and will “just have to suffer through,” he said.

“Keeping marijuana illegal puts patients in a position to have to look to the streets for relief,” he added.

Nobody knows that better than Morrison, who suffers from bipolar disorder. He testified to being beaten in a back alley, robbed of his wallet and left without clothes in near freezing temperatures while trying to obtain marijuana in an unfamiliar town.

He also described having to watch a policeman hold a gun to his brother’s head while a canine officer sniffed him for marijuana.

At the end of his testimony, Morrison offered evidence that cannabis was an ingredient in the “holy anointing oil” used by Jesus. According to him, Jesus used as much as six pounds of cannabis in his anointing oil mixture, which by today’s standards, could constitute possession with intent to distribute.

“If Jesus lived in the United States, he’d be in jail for the rest of his life,” Morrison said.

The fourth and final public hearing on medical marijuana will be held in Council Bluffs tomorrow at the Harrah’s Casino and Hotel from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.

Afterward, the board will review evidence presented at all four hearings, including those held in Mason City and Des Moines, and try to answer the question: should marijuana be removed from Schedule I of the Iowa Controlled Substances Act? The board will then decide whether or not to make a recommendation to the 2010 Iowa General Assembly who will vote on the matter.

At this time, Jeff Danielson, Iowa State Senator for the Cedar Valley, does not support medical marijuana, but in an e-mail he expressed interest in “learning more about the costs, as well as, the benefits of changing the law in the future.”

“From a layman’s perspective, if marijuana has medicinal value, I think it should be prescribed and taken in some other way besides smoking it,” he wrote. “It seems, to me, to defeat the purpose of getting better by smoking.”

Before ending his statement, Lakers described what a decision by board not to recommend rescheduling would feel like to him.

“An endorsement by the board against medical marijuana is the same as dropping a one-ton bale of marijuana on me as I stand, or on one of my brothers and sisters in a wheelchair,” he said.