Robert Randall

Robert C. Randall (January 23, 1948 – June 2, 2001), the first American to legally receive cannabis from the federal government as medicine under modern prohibition. Diagnosed with glaucoma in 1972 at age 24 and told he would likely go blind, Randall discovered cannabis relieved his intraocular pressure after conventional treatments failed. Arrested in Washington, D.C. for cultivating cannabis on his porch, in United States v. Randall (D.C. Superior Court, November 24, 1976) he became the first defendant in U.S. history to successfully use a common-law medical-necessity defense against a marijuana charge. He then petitioned the FDA for legal supply; in November 1976 the agency approved his access, making him the first person since 1937 to legally receive federally supplied cannabis for a medical condition. After his supply was briefly cut off in January 1978, he sued the federal government; the 1978 settlement became the legal basis for the Compassionate Investigational New Drug (IND) program, administered by NIDA using cannabis grown at the University of Mississippi. Randall received roughly 300 pre-rolled government cannabis cigarettes per month for approximately 25 years until his death; he never went blind. In 1980 he and his wife Alice O'Leary co-founded the Alliance for Cannabis Therapeutics, the first national medical-cannabis advocacy nonprofit. His early-1990s Marijuana AIDS Research Service drove surging Compassionate IND applications, which prompted the George H.W. Bush administration to close the program to new entrants in 1992.