America's 1st Legal Weed Patient Smoked 10 Joints a Day Supplied By the Feds

Great Moments in Weed History

David Bienenstock

Tv & Film, Comedy, History

4.8 • 659 Ratings

🗓️ 14 June 2023

⏱️ 63 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Starting in 1976, the National Institute on Drug Abuse supplied Robert Randall with enough government-grown cannabis to treat his severe glaucoma. While lighting a perfectly legal joint on CNN, Randall once explained to Larry King that keeping the condition in check required puffing 10 joints per day. To hear the incredible story of how he ended up as America's first federally legal cannabis patient, we spoke with Alice O'Leary Randall, his wife and partner in a decades-long campaign to make cannabis legally available to the millions of people who wish to use the plant medicinally. EPISODE SPONSORED BY PAX It's time to puff, puff, PAX with the world's most advanced cannabis vaporizer. Check out PAX.com for exceptional cannabis experiences made easy. And use the promo code "great moments" for 10% off your order! EPISODE ARCHIVE Visit our podcast feed for 90+ episodes of our classic Great Moments in Weed History format, and subscribe now to get a new weekly podcast every Weednesday. PATREON Please support Great Moments in Weed HIstory on Patreon. Supporters get exclusive access to video versions of this podcast and private seshes, plus cool rewards like a signed book. And it truly helps us make the best show possible

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi there, it's Bean. Welcome to great moments in weed history. Today's episode is one of the
0:06.6	most important and inspiring we've ever had on this podcast because it is the story of this man.
0:14.0	20 up right now, Robert Randall is one of very unusual court case. He has glaucoma,
0:18.5	which is an eye disease that can cause blindness. He found that
0:21.7	smoking marijuana helped his sight better than what the doctors prescribed for him, so he
0:26.5	asked the government for permission to use the drug legally. But before the permission was granted,
0:32.3	he was arrested for possession of marijuana, and the judge in Washington, D.C., dismissed the case
0:37.4	because Mr.
0:38.7	Randall was using the drug to keep him going blind. Good morning.
0:41.0	Good morning. Nice to have you with us this morning. Thank you.
0:43.3	You won the case and the government provides your marijuana. How does this work? What's the
0:47.5	system? Robert Randall was America's first federally supplied medical cannabis patient.
0:52.4	He passed away in 2001, but his legacy lives on as one of
0:56.2	the most game-changing weed activists of all time. I had the honor of interviewing Robert's
1:02.3	partner in all of this activism, Alice O'Leary Randall about her own long journey with cannabis,
1:08.2	which began in the early 1970s, when smoking weed miraculously
1:11.9	saved the love of her life from going blind and continues on today as she works to educate
1:17.8	her fellow senior citizens about the plants, medicinal benefits. We'll also get to hear from
1:22.9	Robert Randall himself, because towards the middle of this podcast, I've inserted a clip of him appearing on
1:29.0	CNN. Now, that interview among his many is most memorable because our hero took the occasion to
1:36.0	actually light up and smoke a federally legal joint on live TV. In my conversation with Alice,
1:43.0	we discussed that and many other high points of their marriage,
	...

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