Pubdate: Sun, 05 Oct 2014
Source: Virginian-Pilot (Norfolk, VA)
Copyright: 2014 The Virginian-Pilot
Contact: http://drugsense.org/url/zJNzcThR
Website: http://hamptonroads.com/pilotonline
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/483
Author: Elizabeth Simpson, The Virginian-Pilot
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/people/Rosenfeld

FOR PAST 32 YEARS, HIS MEDICINE HAS BEEN MARIJUANA

The tin canister that Irvin Rosenfeld picks up every month, filled to
the brim with 300 marijuana cigarettes, is not something he tries to
hide.

In fact, the 61-year-old Portsmouth native encourages a look, because
he's got papers.

Rolling papers, sure, but legal ones, too. They show that the federal
government not only approved his use of pot, but grows it for him at
the University of Mississippi.

The feds have been doing that for 32 years now, providing him 10
marijuana cigarettes a day to ease pain.

For free.

Rosenfeld lives in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., now, but he was in
Portsmouth this weekend to celebrate the 95th birthday of his father,
Robert Rosenfeld, who lives in an apartment here.

He took the opportunity to show off his legal stash and even light up
during an interview.

In the 1980s, he was one of a small group of people in the
"Compassionate Investigational New Drug" program. The project was
launched after Robert Randall, a glaucoma patient, sued the government
on the grounds of medical necessity, saying he needed marijuana to
treat the eye condition that can lead to blindness.

In response to his legal win, the government set up the program in
1978 to supply him with marijuana and study its impact.

After a federal hearing to plead his case, Rosenfeld became the second
person in the program in 1982. He says the marijuana relieves pain and
inflammation from bone tumors he has endured since he was 10 years
old.

He says the marijuana also works as a muscle relaxant, keeping in
check the dozens of tumors caused by multiple congenital cartilaginous
exostoses.

Other people joined to get relief from chemotherapy-induced nausea and
the pain and spasticity of multiple sclerosis. Dozens were waiting for
approval when the program was shut down in 1992 by President George
H.W. Bush, likely prompted by a combination of the "war on drugs" and
a rising tide of applications from HIV/AIDS patients seeking to
counter the loss of appetite brought on by the debilitating immune
disease.

The original 13 participants, though, were allowed to stay in the
program.

Randall died in 2001, and Rosenfeld said he and a woman with glaucoma
from Oregon are the only two left.

He sees the group's efforts as part of a journey that has led to the
medical use of marijuana in 23 states and Washington, D.C., along with
the legalization of recreational use in Colorado and Washington state.

Marijuana is illegal in Virginia, but Gov. Terry McAuliffe expressed
support in August for its medicinal use. Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam, a
Norfolk physician, has also pledged to support legislation that would
make marijuana oil more accessible for people with epilepsy.

Rosenfeld credits the marijuana with keeping him alive and giving him
enough pain-free time to be a successful stockbroker in Fort Lauderdale.

Without it, he says, he'd probably be doped up on the same painkilling
narcotics that put him in a stupor for almost a decade before he
turned to marijuana.

He said he's had one side effect, which he describes with a smile:
"I'm very disliked in my office because I won't share."

Ironically, he was against marijuana in high school. He graduated from
Woodrow Wilson High in 1971 but took most of his classes in homebound
instruction because of his condition.

After graduation, he went to a Miami college where classmates
encouraged him to smoke pot. He was against the idea at first, but it
didn't take long to realize he could get by with less pain medication
when he did.

He returned to Portsmouth after less than a year and worked with his
father in their furniture business. He smoked marijuana regularly,
buying it illegally for a decade. He jokes that he had to deal with
the criminal element, but "some of them were my friends."

He lobbied for a 1979 law in Virginia that allowed prescription and
possession of marijuana for medical purposes. However, federal
statutes restrict doctors from prescribing the drug, so it didn't have
much impact.

After Rosenfeld got into the federal marijuana program, a Norfolk
doctor issued the prescription for him. When he moved to Florida in
his 30s, doctors there took over his case.

Rosenfeld smokes around 10 joints a day, from marijuana grown by the
National Institute on Drug Abuse in Mississippi. It's freeze-dried and
rolled in Raleigh before being shipped to a Florida pharmacy in tin
cans.

He puts the marijuana in a plastic bag with some wet paper towels to
humidify it and rolls it in his own papers because the
government-issue paper doesn't work very well. He also turns some of
the marijuana into oil that he can use in a vaporizer pen. His wife of
41 years is allergic to smoke.

He puffs on a couple of joints when he gets up and more on the way to
and from work. He also takes breaks to go to his car for a smoke.

He lights up in the evening as well.

Rosenfeld has had run-ins with police, who have smelled the smoke
through his car windows, but he keeps his prescription and federal
protocol papers with him at all times - and even newspaper articles to
prove who he is.

Once every six months, his doctor must fill out a report on the
effects of the drug. But he said the government has never expressed
much interest.

There are few studies of the long-term effects of marijuana use,
though some have linked it to a higher risk of car accidents. There's
also been concern about the availability of stronger strains of
marijuana and the possibility of children taking it accidently and
teens becoming addicted to it.

Marijuana is not approved by the Food and Drug Administration, but the
federal agency has approved some drugs made with cannabinoids, the
active ingredient in marijuana, to treat medical conditions.

Rosenfeld says that he doesn't experience the euphoric high associated
with the drug and that it actually enhances his thinking.

He has testified before state and federal legislators across the
country as an advocate for medical marijuana. He's fighting for its
use in Florida right now and has gone from speaking once a month on
the issue to several times a week.

"People are finally realizing it's not the evil weed it's been made
out to be," he said, taking a last draw on his hand-rolled joint.
"Used correctly, it can be a miraculous drug."
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