US FL: Man In Medical Pot Case Dies [Robert Randall]
Posted on Tuesday, June 05 @ 06:45:26 MST by KWhiteContributed by: KWhite
Robert Randall of Sarasota, 53, the first person in the United States to receive legal, medical access to federal supplies of marijuana, died June 2 at his home of AIDS-related complications.
Randall made legal and medical history in 1976 when a federal court ruled that his use of marijuana for treatment of his glaucoma was a medical necessity. "This was the first time that the common law concept of necessity was applied to a medical condition," said Randall's wife, Alice.
"But two years later the government terminated his access to marijuana despite evidence that he would go blind."
He sued for reinstatement of the drug and won. He kept using marijuana with federal permission until his death.
Randall was born Jan. 23, 1948, in Sarasota and received bachelor's and master's degrees in speech and rhetoric from the University of South Florida.
He developed glaucoma in his teens and an ophthalmologist told him in the early 1970s that he would be blind within a few years. He never went blind, however.
In a February 1999 Herald-Tribune interview, he recalled the night he realized the benefits of marijuana: He was relaxing in his apartment, smoking a marijuana cigarette a friend had given him. Looking out the apartment windows, he realized that the telltale halo around a nearby street light had disappeared.
He grew his own plants until he was arrested and prosecuted. He then underwent exhaustive tests that proved no other glaucoma drug available lowered his intraocular pressure and halted the deterioration of his eyesight. Randall used that argument in appealing to the federal government to gain legal access to marijuana.
In 1981, Randall and his wife founded ACT, Alliance for Cannabis Therapeutics, the first nonprofit organization dedicated to reforming laws prohibiting medical marijuana use.
Randall drafted legislation calling for a federal program of controlled access to the drug. The legislation was introduced in Congress, but failed.
In the early 1990s, Randall concentrated on the medical use of marijuana by those afflicted with AIDS and established the Marijuana AIDS Research Service, or MARS, which helped AIDS patients apply for access to marijuana.
The efforts provided the basis for AIDS patients to access promising but unapproved drugs such as AZT.
After initially approving dozens of marijuana requests, the federal government closed the program and cut off the only means of legal, medical access to marijuana in the country.
However, Randall and seven others who had brought their cases to the courts continued to receive federal supplies of marijuana.
Public outrage at the closure of the MARS program led to state ballot initiatives such as California's referendum in 1996 that allowed cooperatives to distribute marijuana to patients with chronic illnesses such as AIDS, multiple sclerosis and cancer.
But on May 14, the Supreme Court ruled that the federal law controlling narcotics makes no exception for therapeutic use of the drug.
Randall's wife said he and the seven others who had been granted use of marijuana were not affected by the ruling, though other users were.
"Robert was quite upset but not surprised by the decision," his wife said, "because the concept of medical necessity, which is how he won his case in 1976, is a very strict legal determination and the people in California were essentially a marijuana supermarket. We would have have preferred having marijuana being made available through a doctor's prescription."
In 1999 Randall and his wife chronicled their battle to legalize marijuana for medicinal use in an autobiographical book, "Marijuana Rx: The Patient's Fight for Medicinal Pot."
Lyn Nofziger, a prominent Republican and former director of communication and speech writer in the Reagan administration, wrote the forward for their book. Nofziger's family had turned to marijuana when his daughter was fighting the effects of chemotherapy for lymph cancer.
After growing up in Sarasota, Randall moved to Washington, D.C., in 1971. He returned to Sarasota in 1995.
Survivors also include a sister, Susan, and a brother, Dick, both of Sarasota.
A celebration of life will be from 5 to 7 p.m. June 23 at Baywood Colony Community Center, 5895 Tidewood Ave., Sarasota. Wiegand Brothers Funeral Home is in charge.
Memorial donations may be made to Hospice of Southwest Florida, 5955 Rand Blvd., Sarasota, FL 34238.
Date: Tue, 05 Jun 2001
Author: Hildegard Scheibner
Source: Sarasota Herald-Tribune (FL)------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"I have no reason to suppose that he, who would take away my Liberty,
would not when he had me in his Power, take away everything else."
-- John LockeRep. (CA) Henry Waxman says, "If someone is so fearful that, that they're
going to start using their weapons to protect their rights, makes me
very nervous that these people have these weapons at all!"
If Waxman is nervous that I love my rights and am willing to defend
them at all costs...that's a good thing."A man who finds himself in a fight for that which is right, has
already won at the game of life. The task itself is an honorable one.
Perhaps instead of bemoaning the scope of the opposition, we should be
praising God, who honored us by assigning us to such an important
task. This sort of thing is not of course, for the weak in spirit --
there can be a cost associated with standing up for freedom."
--Michael Peirce
Yahoo! Groups Sponsor
Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service.
