The Des Moines-based company that produces medical cannabis products reacted strongly to Gov. Kim Reynolds’ veto Friday of legislation that would have loosened restrictions on the program, saying that maintaining current limits in the law greatly hurts patients who face debilitating medical conditions. 

“By vetoing House File 732, Gov. Reynolds and the Medical Cannabidiol Advisory Board have failed to support the Iowa patients they were tasked with helping,” MedPharm Iowa General Manager Lucas Nelson said in a statement. “The bill would have fixed Iowa’s deeply flawed medical cannabis program while also keeping it one of the strictest — perhaps the strictest — in the country.”  

The bill would have removed the 3% limit on THC in medical CBD products and replaced it with a limit of 25 grams of THC per 90-day period, a change that Reynolds said was not recommended by the Medical Cannabidiol Advisory Board.  

Reynolds said in a news release that she “fully supported” most of the changes agreed to by legislators and the board, but said that replacing the 3% limit with a 25-gram-per-day limit would “drastically expand Iowa’s medical CBD program far beyond its original scope of CBD-based treatments and could open the door to significant unintended consequences to the health and safety of Iowans.” 

In her veto transmittal letter, Reynolds said that she was not able to discern any evidence-based justification for the 25-gram limit in the bill, and that the board had recommended a limit of only 4.5 grams per 90-day period.  

Nelson said the governor and the board were provided with a number of peer-reviewed papers demonstrating that patients need options in their treatment.  

“It is simply incorrect to state that there is not an evidence-based justification for the changes proposed in this bill,” he said. “This evidence appears to have been ignored, despite the harm this will cause Iowa patients. In recommending 4.5 grams, the board is apparently comfortable with forcing patients to reduce their current doses, without the consent of those patients.”