Pubdate: Thu, 27 Feb 2014
Source: Orlando Sentinel (FL)
Copyright: 2014 Orlando Sentinel
Contact:  http://www.orlandosentinel.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/325
Note: Rarely prints out-of-state LTEs.
Author: Scott Powers

FLORIDA MAN: I'M 'LIVING PROOF' FOR LEGALIZING MEDICAL POT

Whenever Irv Rosenfeld needs relief from the pain and swelling of 
hundreds of bone tumors, he lights up a joint - almost anywhere he 
wants. Legally. Rosenfeld, a financial planner from South Florida, 
calls it medicine. So do his doctors. So does the federal government, 
which not only supplies Rosenfeld with the equivalent of a 
get-out-of-jail-free card, it also supplies him with his weed.

Rosenfeld, 61, is one of only two people in the United States who 
have a federal legal blessing to smoke pot.

He spoke Wednesday night at a student event at the University of 
Central Florida, espousing the medicinal benefits of marijuana and 
advocating support for the proposed Florida constitutional amendment 
that would legalize medical marijuana for others. The amendment will 
be on the November statewide ballot.

"I'm living proof that it works," Rosenfeld told the Sentinel. "If I 
didn't have the medicine, if I was still alive, I'd be homebound on 
disability."

Rosenfeld was born in Portsmouth, Va., with multiple congenital 
cartilaginous exostosis, a disease that causes bone tumors all over 
his body. He wasn't expected to live to adulthood. But multiple 
surgeries and multiple drugs kept him alive and on his feet. He got 
through school and went to the University of Miami, because warm 
weather seemed to help his condition.

He said he was the kind of kid in the late 1960s who made anti-drug 
counselors proud and potheads in his social circles annoyed, because 
he didn't just say no to illegal drugs, he openly campaigned against 
them among students.

But at Miami in the early 1970s he succumbed to peer pressure and 
started smoking pot with friends, he said. And then he noticed 
something: He could sit in comfort for extended periods without the 
opiate painkillers he was prescribed to take.

"I looked at this joint and, being analytical, I said, 'Gee whiz,' " 
he recalled.

Rosenfeld began studying his own drug use. He and his orthopedic 
surgeon published a paper on the study. When they learned that the 
U.S. Food and Drug Administration had approved another patient to use 
marijuana as "an investigational new drug," they pushed for Rosenfeld 
to join him. In1982 Rosenfeld became the second person approved by 
the FDA to use medical cannabis.

The program expanded to 13 people by the early 1990s, when the FDA 
stopped accepting applications, but just two survive now, he said.

Calvina Fay, president of Save Our Society From Drugs, which opposes 
Florida's proposed medical-marijuana constitutional amendment, said 
the FDA program failed to demonstrate marijuana's effectiveness.

"It is our understanding that this was an experiment that was 
conducted years ago by the government and was later discontinued due 
to it not resulting in evidence that marijuana met the standards as a 
safe and effective medicine," Fay said.

Officials with the FDA and the National Institute on Drug Abuse did 
not respond to Sentinel inquiries about Rosenfeld.

Since 1982 he has been allowed to smoke 10 joints a day, and he said 
they keep his disease in check. He hasn't grown any new tumors since 
he started smoking pot, and the 200 or so he has all are benign.

His marijuana has a low potency of THC, the principal psychoactive 
chemical in pot that gets people high. His drug is grown on a federal 
farm in Mississippi and shipped to him monthly by the National 
Institute on Drug Abuse.

He can legally smoke marijuana in all 50 states and the District of 
Columbia. He said he's been detained by police three times (once at 
Walt Disney World) but has only been formally arrested once: at 
Orlando's Church Street Station in 1983. A federal official sent a 
letter to Orange County explaining his status, and he was released 
and charges dropped. He carries that letter with him now.

He has watched the rise of state initiatives such as Florida's to 
legalize medical marijuana and has joined the causes wherever and 
whenever he can, saying he has campaigned for medical pot in14 of the 
20 states that have approved it. Now it's Florida's turn, he said.

"When you've got a devastating disorder, all you care about is to get 
medicine that works," Rosenfeld said. "The doctors don't know why. I 
don't know why. It saved my life."
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