Robert C. Randall (1948 – June 2, 2001) was an American advocate for
medical marijuana
Medical cannabis, or medical marijuana (MMJ), is cannabis and cannabinoids that are prescribed by physicians for their patients. The use of cannabis as medicine has not been rigorously tested due to production and governmental restriction ...
and the founder of
Alliance for Cannabis Therapeutics
The Alliance for Cannabis Therapeutics (ACT) is an organization supporting medical marijuana that was founded in 1981 by Robert C. Randall
Robert C. Randall (1948 – June 2, 2001) was an American advocate for medical marijuana and the founde ...
.
Life and activism
Robert Randall was the first legal medical
marijuana
Cannabis, also known as marijuana among other names, is a psychoactive drug from the cannabis plant. Native to Central or South Asia, the cannabis plant has been used as a drug for both recreational and entheogenic purposes and in various t ...
smoker in the United States since 1937. Randall successfully used a
medical necessity
Medical necessity is a legal doctrine in the United States related to activities that may be justified as reasonable, necessary, and/or appropriate based on evidence-based clinical standards of care. In contrast, unnecessary health care lacks su ...
defense when he was charged with illegal possession of cannabis to treat his glaucoma. The case, United States v. Randall, is "The first successful articulation of the medical necessity defense in the history of the common law, and indeed, the first case to extend the necessity defense to the crimes of possession or cultivation of marijuana".
Writings
Randall, who wrote ''Marijuana & AIDS: Pot, Politics, and PWAs in America'', also documented his accounts in his book, co-written with his wife Alice O'Leary: ''Marijuana Rx: The Patients Fight for Medical Pot'', .
See also
*
Compassionate Investigational New Drug program
Expanded access or compassionate use is the use of an unapproved drug or medical device under special forms of investigational new drug applications (IND) or IDE application for devices, outside of a clinical trial, by people with serious or life ...
References
External links
''High in America''by Patrick Anderson (chapter on Robert Randall)
at the Drug Policy Forum of Wisconsin
1948 births
2001 deaths
American cannabis activists
{{US-activist-stub