On Monday, September 14, I drove to Lincoln and spoke during public comment at the Nebraska Medical Cannabis Commission. Here is the statement I prepared, the two things I asked for, and what I still can't tell you about how it went.
Public comment gives every speaker three minutes. It is a show of hands, and nobody answers back. I'm a writer, not a politician, and I don't have a title to speak from. I have a website that puts a source next to every claim, so I wrote down what I wanted the Commission to hear and kept it to the record. This is that statement, as I prepared it.
This is the text I prepared and took with me, with one change: I removed a sentence about a family member's health, and adjusted the words around it, for this published version. It is not a transcript of what I said in the room. The Commission's minutes, and any recording, are the record of that. I've asked for both, and I'll link them here when I have them.
Nebraska Medical Cannabis Commission, 301 Centennial Mall South, Lincoln.
Good afternoon. My name is Angel Loza — A-N-G-E-L, L-O-Z-A. I live in Omaha.
I publish a free civics website that reports the public record with a source on every claim. It sells nothing and takes no position on medical cannabis. I write down what the government actually did, and I link to the document.
I have read this Commission's minutes and its agendas. I wrote to your office, and your staff answered me promptly and clearly. I want to say publicly that I appreciated it.
I came today for one reason. The people of Nebraska voted for this in 2024. Two years later, there is still no patient registry, and nobody I can find has published how many practitioners have ever written a recommendation, or how many patients hold one. Not zero — unknown. Right now a citizen cannot tell the difference.
I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1998. I checked, and that condition — like fibromyalgia, and most of the painful conditions people in this room actually live with — has never been named on any list under this law. Not excluded. Just never written down.
So I have two requests, not questions. First: publish the count — how many recommendations, how many patients — even if the honest answer is that nobody has ever counted. Second: as the rulemaking moves forward, include the people who actually live with this pain in writing it, not as a formality, but because a law that reaches this few patients after two years is worth rewriting with them in the room.
Thank you for your time, and for the work of running a public meeting every month.
Neither one is an opinion about cannabis. The first asks for a number: how many practitioner recommendations, and how many patients, exist under the law Nebraskans voted for. If the honest answer is that nobody has counted, I'd like the Commission to say that in public. The second asks who is in the room when the rules get written.
The people who run the Commission, and how they got there, are laid out with sources on Five People, No Ballot. The list of qualifying conditions, and why there isn't one, is on Who actually qualifies for medical cannabis?
The Commission's minutes for September 14. On September 17, the Commission's program manager replied that minutes are posted within about ten days, and that a fuller answer on my request for a recording would take longer, because the staff is very small. I'll update this post with the minutes and whatever the Commission tells me about a recording. Until then I won't describe what anyone else said or decided, because I don't have the record.
...that the most useful thing I could do in that room was ask a government to count something it already counts, or to say plainly that it doesn't? I'd rather be told “we haven't counted” in writing than guess. That's the same rule this site runs on, and I'd like the people writing these rules to hold themselves to it.