50 Years of Vision / 1976 to today
Medicinehas roots.
Medical cannabis has a paper trail. It is fifty years long.
A message from the Cannabis Media Council
In 1976, a Washington, D.C., court acquitted Robert Randall of marijuana possession on the grounds of medical necessity. He and Alice O'Leary Randall spent the next twenty years fighting to make that access available to other patients. Alice kept every clipping.
Chapter 01 / 1975
A handful of plants on a sun deck.
Robert Randall was diagnosed with glaucoma in his early twenties. His doctor told him he would be blind by thirty.
The prescribed drops were failing. Then he noticed something by accident. On the evenings he smoked marijuana, the halos around the streetlights went away.
So he grew his own. In the summer of 1975, police found the plants on the deck of the Washington, D.C. apartment he shared with Alice O'Leary, and both of them were charged.
Most people would have paid the fine. Robert decided to stand in a courtroom and say the plants were medicine.
We did everything we could to keep him supplied with marijuana, and that included letting a couple of volunteer plants sprout up on the sun deck one spring.
Alice O'Leary Randall in conversation with the Cannabis Media Council. Read more on the Just Say Know blog.
An illustration of what Robert described to his doctors, drawn for this story.
The original opinion, reproduced in The Daily Washington Law Reporter, December 28, 1976. Read all five pages.
Chapter 02 / 1976
Not guilty, by reason of medical necessity.
In May 1976, Robert petitioned the federal government for access to the cannabis it was already growing for research. That July, he and Alice stood trial for cultivating marijuana.
His lawyers presented testimony from eye doctors and supervised testing at UCLA, which showed that cannabis lowered Robert's eye pressure when added to his prescribed medications, which alone were no longer effective.
On November 12, Robert received his first take home supply of government marijuana. Twelve days later, on November 24, 1976, Judge James A. Washington Jr. ruled that the harm of going blind outweighed the harm of growing a few plants. The charges were dismissed. It was the first successful medical necessity defense in an American marijuana case.
Robert Randall had become the first and only American authorized to use federally supplied marijuana as medicine.
Paul's answer was very simple: prove it. So we had to prove it, and that became our life's work.
Alice O'Leary Randall in conversation with the Cannabis Media Council. Read more on the Just Say Know blog.
Chapter 03 / 1977 to 1978
The government starts shipping. Then it tries to stop.
Robert took his story to every camera that would have him, including Good Morning America on January 26, 1977. Publicity was the plan because publicity was protection.
Letters arrived from people with cancer, multiple sclerosis, and epilepsy. Thirteen joined a petition to the U.S. Attorney General seeking the same access to medical marijuana as Robert. It was basically ignored by the government.
In 1978, Robert's federal supply was interrupted. On May 6, he sued the responsible federal agencies. They settled within 48 hours. The settlement expanded the Compassionate Investigational New Drug program to include federal marijuana, opening a legal pathway for other patients.
A counterintuitive lesson emerged and endured for twenty years: patients who stayed quiet risked losing access. Those who spoke publicly had a better chance of keeping it.
Robert's early supplies came in small plastic cases, followed by prescription bottles from 1978 to 1982. The familiar monthly tins arrived in 1982.
- Grownon the federal research farm at the University of Mississippi.
- Packedas rolled cigarettes, about 300 to a steel tin, and kept frozen until shipping.
- Suppliedin several forms of packaging over 25 years; tins directly to Robert from 1982.
Chapter 04 / 1978 to 1996
While Washington stalled, the states moved.
It did not all start with California. It started in New Mexico, with a cancer patient named Lynn Pierson.
Lynn, with Robert's support, championed legislation to give seriously ill patients access to marijuana. In February 1978, Governor Jerry Apodaca signed the nation's first state law recognizing marijuana's medical value. Illinois, Louisiana, and Florida followed that same year.
By 1981, 34 states had passed similar laws. Most authorized creation of a state research program which would report its findings to the FDA. Federal obfuscation, however, virtually guaranteed that few were ever put to work.
The states had said yes. The supply never came.
Each dot is one state. Counts from published histories of the period.
The people in the clippings
The people who moved the story.
The Project 50 archive, in five folders
Turn the pages Alice saved.
The Project 50 archive holds more than a thousand news clippings and historical documents. These five interactive folders trace the turning points of the early medical marijuana movement, with links to the original records that tell the story.
Chapter 05 / The keeper of the story
She was there for all of it. She's got receipts.
Alice O'Leary Randall was arrested alongside Robert in 1975, helped establish the Alliance for Cannabis Therapeutics in 1981, and preserved the movement's history along the way.
Robert delivered his last public speech at the inaugural Patients Out of Time conference in April 2000. He died on June 2, 2001, in Sarasota, Florida, at age 53.
In 1998, Alice coauthored Marijuana Rx: The Patients' Fight for Medicinal Pot with Robert. She also authored Medical Marijuana in America: Memoir of a Pioneer (2014) and Pain Free with CBD (2019). Her Project 50 archive preserves and digitizes the movement's first twenty years, 1976 to 1996, before the internet made information widely accessible. In those days, a story could disappear with a box of newspapers.
The archive is free and open to everyone. In 2026, Alice is revisiting that history in her series, Medical Marijuana at 50.
Robert at one point said that he felt like the only one to make the lifeboat, and that there were cries in the water all around us. We couldn't walk away.
Alice O'Leary Randall in conversation with the Cannabis Media Council. Read more on the Just Say Know blog.
In her own words
A conversation with Alice O'Leary Randall.
Alice talks through fifty years of the record she kept, from the sun deck in 1975 to the archive today.
Open the archive
Twelve folders. Twenty years. Every original voice.
Everything here is free to read, download, and share. Pick a folder to see what is inside, then open the real thing.
Curated by Alice O'Leary Randall. Items are posted for information. The originators retain all rights.
Chapter 06 / 1972 to 2026
One question, asked for more than fifty years.
Does cannabis have an accepted medical use? Robert's courtroom said yes in 1976. Slide through how long it took the federal schedule to catch up.
A message from the Cannabis Media Council and advocacy partners
Before there were brands and operators, there were patients.
Amy Deneson, Executive Director and Co-Founder, Cannabis Media Council
With 50 Years of Vision, we celebrate the 50 year milestone of medical cannabis advocacy in the US. Before there were brands and operators, there were patients. One patient, to be exact, in 1976. Our new Medicine Has Roots campaign honors the advocates who made this industry possible, and asks all of us to learn from them through archives like Alice O'Leary Randall's groundbreaking Project 50. Alice is our wisdom keeper, and Project 50 is her gift to every generation of advocates. The Cannabis Media Council is committed to ensuring that history informs how we market, advocate, and serve patients today and going forward until we achieve full legalization.
Amy Deneson, Executive Director and Co-Founder, Cannabis Media CouncilWhen I founded NORML in 1970, no American court had recognized a patient's right to use cannabis as medicine. Six years later, Robert Randall changed that, and he and Alice O'Leary Randall spent the next two decades making his ruling matter for every patient who followed. The Cannabis Media Council's Medicine Has Roots campaign, 50 Years of Vision, ensures that these groundbreaking victories aren't forgotten. Each newspaper clipping in this archive tells a story and reminds us that these victories were won in courtrooms and in living rooms long before the internet could record them. Alice's Project 50 archive preserves that roadmap, and it's how we seed the next generation of advocates who will keep fighting for patients.
Keith Stroup, Founder, NORMLRobert Randall's case was won in part because his doctors took the stand beside him and told the court what they saw. Fifty years later, our role as physicians is the same: listen to patients, follow the evidence, and help them access the care they need. Patients should not have to fight alone for access to a treatment that helps them. As doctors, we must provide our honest clinical judgment, our voice in policy, and our respect for advocates like Alice O'Leary Randall, who kept this record so we can all learn from it.
Julie Holland, M.D., Psychiatrist and AuthorWe can't become complacent. We really can't. We have not won.
Alice O'Leary Randall in conversation with the Cannabis Media Council. Read more on the Just Say Know blog.
More ways to share the story
Medicine has roots.
The people who made medical cannabis possible should not be forgotten. Start with whichever step fits you.
