of marijuana and discovered the rich history of the medical use of the Cannabis plant and that the “marijuana” prohibition, which began in the 1930s, was based on lies, greed and racism.
In 1985, I was invited to serve as the Director of NORML’s Council on Marijuana & Health and learned from cannabis icons such as Lester Grinspoon, Melanie Dreher, and Norman Zinberg. During this time, we also met Robert Randall and Alice O’Leary, the founders of the Alliance for Cannabis Therapeutics (ACT). Robert was a glaucoma patient who got busted for growing marijuana and made history with his legal case against the federal prohibition using a “medical necessity” defense. He won his case and became the first patient to receive receive cannabis from the federal government. Through ACT, we met other patients in the Compassionate Investigational New Drug (IND) program1.
Within a few years, both Al and I were invited to join the Board of Directors of NORML. Al served as Secretary for several years and we both got involved in organizing the national NORML conferences and began including presentations on the therapeutic value of cannabis. In 1990, we invited the 5 patients who were in the IND program for a panel presentation that was filmed by C-Span and aired throughout the U.S. . Now patients throughout the U.S. were seeing and hearing from patients using cannabis supplied by the federal government. The FDA was deluged with applications for access to the IND program, most of which were for patients with HIV/AIDS. In 1992, the federal government closed the IND program to new patients, denied access to cannabis for the 30+ patient IND applications they had approved, but allowed the current 15 patients to continue in the program. It wasn’t meant to be an open door for patients in need.
Mary Lynn Mathre & husband, Al Byrne
for the 30+ patient IND applications they had approved, but allowed the current 15 patients to continue in the program. It wasn’t meant to be an open door for patients in need.
By 1995, there were only 8 of the 15 federally supplied cannabis patients still alive. Al and I realized that the federal government was hoping the remaining patients would soon die so they did not have to acknowledge that patients were benefiting from their cannabis use. We also realized that pushing for the end of the marijuana prohibition was too great a leap for most health care professionals and that we could make more progress if we focused on the safety and efficacy of cannabis as medicine. So Al and I decided to form a new organization dedicated to educating health care professionals and the public about the therapeutic use of cannabis. We believed that education was the key to ending the cannabis prohibition and that if health care professionals understood the science that supports medical cannabis, they would feel obligated as patient advocates to help end the prohibition of cannabis.
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