Pubdate: Mon, 07 Apr 2003
Source: Palm Beach Post, The (FL)
Copyright: 2003 The Palm Beach Post
Contact:  http://www.gopbi.com/partners/pbpost/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/333
Author: Eliot Kleinberg, Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/people/Irvin+Rosenfeld (Irvin Rosenfeld)

MAN TRAVELS WITH POT, HIS 'MEDICINE'

FORT LAUDERDALE -- Irvin Rosenfeld was so nervous he had forgotten his
winter jacket. The former Boca Raton stockbroker, his heart in his
throat, stepped gingerly through the security checkpoint, tensely
dropping his cellphone and other personal items into a plastic bin.
That's because Rosenfeld's small, black soft-sided suitcase held a
metal tin with enough marijuana for about 70 joints.

The X-ray machine took no notice of the tin, or if it did, the guard
paid him no heed and didn't notice the ace bandage on Rosenfeld's
right foot after he removed his moccasins and dropped them in as well.

As he walked to the gate, he was fraught with panic that at any
moment, he could be yanked off the plane or kept from getting on at
all. But no one stopped him at the gate, and soon he was on his way to
a family gathering in New Jersey.

Rosenfeld has to carry the pot. His body is a mass of tumors, and the
marijuana is the only medicine that reduces the pain enough for him to
even walk. Without it, he says, he could have a dangerous or even
lethal hemorrhage. The federal government grows the pot in Mississippi
and ships it to a pharmacy at the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute in Miami
for Rosenfeld to pick up.

And everywhere he goes, he has to explain himself.

In 2001, Delta Air Lines blocked him from a plane. Rosenfeld sued,
then decided to drop the suit because of an appeals court's ruling in
a similar case and now has a complaint before the U.S. Department of
Transportation. But he had those Delta frequent flyer miles he hated
to eat, and Delta was the airline with the best connections for his
wife to join him in New Jersey from her business trip in California.

So, on March 28, for the first time since Delta turned him away, he
was again flying Delta.

"Can you believe it?" he said as he waited in line to pass security.
"I'm so nervous because I don't know what's going to happen. I'm
shaking. It's not right."

He returned the following Sunday without incident, not nearly as
nervous as when he had left.

Asked if Rosenfeld's weekend excursion represented a change in Delta
policy, spokeswoman Peggy Estes said last week, "We don't have a
policy. We didn't make a policy. He is welcome to fly on Delta Air
Lines." Asked if his marijuana was now welcome as well, she responded,
"I didn't say that." When asked to elaborate, she said, "That's the
only comment I have."

Thirty years of using 'my medicine'

Rosenfeld, who lives and works in Broward County, said he can go
without marijuana for three to four hours before the pain spreads. He
has gone as long as two days. Without his medicine, he said, he'd have
been in too much pain to attend the bat mitzvah of his cousin's
daughter, especially in the cold and damp of a New Jersey spring.

Rosenfeld said he called Delta a month in advance to alert them and
called again two weeks before his flight. He also said he explained
his situation to a woman at the new Transportation Security
Administration in Washington.

"She couldn't believe it," Rosenfeld said. "They assured me they're in
charge of who gets on a plane, not Delta. They're security, not
another airline."

TSA spokesman Brian Trumail, in Washington, said last week that what
the woman told Rosenfeld was correct as far as the security checkpoint
goes but that an airline still has the right to bar a passenger.

For more than 30 years, Rosenfeld has smoked about a dozen joints a
day, two about every two hours. He insists on calling the pot "my
medicine" and has become a national advocate for allowing medicinal
use of cannabis, either in marijuana or in an effective pill, which he
says has not been perfected. He opposes legalization for recreational
use.

For the first 10 years, he bought pot wherever he could. Then,
Rosenfeld become one of 13 people nationwide supplied marijuana by the
federal government in the 1980s. He was the second one approved, in
1982. The 13 were grandfathered in when the program was shut down in
1992. The five who had AIDS have since died. A sixth, with glaucoma,
died a year ago.

Arrested, Detained in the 1980s

Rosenfeld was arrested in 1983 in Orlando after smoking a joint in a
second-floor bathroom at Church Street Station. The officer told him
Florida law superseded federal law, and he was fingerprinted and
photographed. A supervisor was persuaded to release him after about
three hours, and the charges were dropped three days later. In 1985,
he was detained for three hours at Walt Disney World after he was
caught smoking the pot in the park. A policeman once pulled a gun on
him. But he'd never had problems with airlines until the March 2001
confrontation with Delta.

Just last month, Rosenfeld got Georgetown University's Institute for
Public Representation in on his case and filed his formal complaint
with the U.S. Department of Transportation. Staff attorney Sheila
Bedi, who argued the failed case that effectively shut down
Rosenfeld's lawsuit, said the DOT has "taken these complaints much
more seriously than they have in the past. Often they're looking for a
pattern or practice, and we have an isolated incident. But the
violation was pretty egregious."

Delta's initial defense had been that Rosenfeld hadn't adequately
informed the airline he had federal permission to travel with the
marijuana. Rosenfeld disputed that, saying he flew on Delta and other
airlines dozens of times over several years and cleared his pot with
airline and airport officials every time.

After Rosenfeld sued in December 2001, a Delta spokeswoman said the
airline was "not aware of any medical use exception of the nature that
Mr. Rosenfeld claims" and that if the federal government advised
Rosenfeld was permitted to carry the pot, Delta would comply.

"All they had to do was pick up the phone," Rosenfeld said. "And if
they didn't believe Bascom Palmer, pick up the phone and call FDA and
DEA. I had the numbers for them."

Despite the fact that the federal government supplies the pot,
Rosenfeld has never been able to obtain a document he could carry with
him saying it's OK for him to carry the drugs.

"I'd love to get that," he said. "They won't do it."

He asked the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which administered the
original program and grows the pot. The agency said he'd need a letter
from Rosenfeld's private doctor, who writes the prescription, But,
Rosenfeld said, the doctor did not want to get into a wrestling match
with the federal government. He asked the U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration, but DEA lawyer Charles Trant wrote his lawyers in
November 2002 that the agency wasn't authorized to offer such a document.

"DEA does not have the statutory authority to authorize anyone to
possess" marijuana, spokesman Will Glaspy said. "Additionally, there
is nothing that DEA could provide to Mr. Rosenfeld that would allow
him to override state laws." 
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake