Living Proof the Government Lies about Marijuana

On November 24, 1976, Federal Judge James Washington ruled: “While blindness was shown by competent medical testimony to be the otherwise inevitable result of the defendant’s disease, no adverse effects from the smoking of marijuana have been demonstrated. Medical evidence suggests that the medical prohibition is not well-founded.”

The criminal charges against Randall were dropped and following a petition filed by Randall in May 1976, federal agencies began providing him with FDA-approved access to government supplies of medical marijuana, becoming the first American to receive marijuana for the treatment of a medical disorder.

Of course when Randall went public with his story, the government tried to prevent his legal access to marijuana. This led to the ‘78 lawsuit where Randall was represented pro bono by a big law firm. Twenty-four hours after filing the suit, the federal agencies requested an out-of-court settlement, which resulted in Randall gaining prescriptive access to marijuana through a federal pharmacy.

The settlement in Randall v. U.S. became the legal basis for the FDA’s Compassionate IND program. Initially only available to patients afflicted by marijuana-responsive disorders and orphan drugs, the concept was expanded to include HIV-positive patients during the peak of the AIDS epidemic of the mid-1980s. It was during this time the seeds were planted for the modern medical marijuana movement that gave way to California’s landmark 1996 Proposition 215 that legalized medical marijuana in the state. But, due to the growing number of AIDS patients throughout the late 1980s and the resulting numbers of patients who joined the Compassionate IND program, the George H. W. Bush administration ended the program in 1992. At its peak, the program had thirty active patients.

Currently, there are four walking contradictions that receive government-grown medical marijuana from a government that STILL refuses to acknowledge marijuana is a healing medicine. One of those walking contradictions is Irvin Rosenfeld, a successful stockbroker, marijuana patient, friend of ours, he’s holding our STICKER in that pic up there and near his tin of joints on the left, and living proof that the United States Government is LYING TO YOU. Irvin is the most public of the remaining patients who admit to receiving federal marijuana. He has a rare bone disorder and for the last 28 years he’s been receiving eleven ounces of weed every three weeks (since Nov. 20, 1982). Every 25 days Irvin goes to a pharmacy and picks up a tin of 300 federally-grown and rolled joints. When we were hanging out, he told us that the gov’s weed is dried-out low-grade schwag. He says he unrolls all 300 joints and puts the herb in a container with a lettuce leaf to rehydrate. Since he’s a federal patient, it’s not legal for him to smoke anything else…if he did…he’d lose his federal patient status and have to kiss all that free government-grown weed goodbye.

Irv’s almost famous. He’s been featured in magazines, on TV, and has a book out, all due to Multiple Congenital Cartilaginous Exostoses, a painful disorder that causes bone tumors to form at Irv’s joints, stretching the surrounding tendons and veins, making movement almost impossible. He’s had 30 tumors removed in six operations. He still has 200 tumors, some too small to remove, yet in the 30 years he has been smoking marijuana, he says, he has not had a new tumor.

So here’s a guy, buy his book here, who smokes ten joints a day as government-provided medicine…and has for more than two and a half decades…who personifies the federal government’s contradictory stance on marijuana. Talk about a blunt message.