YOU CAN’T MAKE THIS SHIT UP: Uncle Sam’s Weed Tin

Filed Under: Federal Hypocrisy, Sealed in Wax

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The United States government supplied Irvin Rosenfeld with hundreds of marijuana cigarettes at a time. Then it spent decades insisting cannabis had no accepted medical use.

On November 20, 1982, Irvin Rosenfeld walked into his doctor’s office and found a metal tin waiting for him.

Wax sealed the lid. His doctor needed a screwdriver to pry it open. Beneath a thin sheet of Styrofoam sat approximately 300 marijuana cigarettes, rolled and ready to smoke.

The United States government had supplied every one of them.

Rosenfeld’s doctor handed him two joints and told him to smoke them outside. He went to his car, lit the first government-issued joint of his life, and discovered that federal weed tasted terrible.

Rosenfeld later wrote:

“The taste was harsh.”

The quality may have been rough. The paperwork was immaculate.

Rosenfeld smoked both cigarettes and returned to the office, where Goldman checked his vital signs and made sure he remained coherent. With everything normal, the doctor gave him 68 more joints and ordered him back in a week. After the second examination, Rosenfeld received the rest of the tin and helped the doctor’s secretary complete the paperwork for his next federal shipment.

The first can contained 11 ounces of cannabis and had arrived by Federal Express. Later that night, Rosenfeld saw a commercial promising that Federal Express could deliver anything from three ounces to 70 pounds. He and his wife laughed at the fact that the company had just delivered 11 ounces of government marijuana to his doctor.

Rosenfeld had become one of the few Americans legally permitted to possess marijuana under federal law. His supply came through the Compassionate Investigational New Drug program, a narrow federal arrangement that distributed cannabis to patients with severe medical conditions.

The program eventually closed to new patients, but Rosenfeld’s supply continued.

For decades, federal agencies grew his cannabis, processed it into cigarettes, and shipped it through an approved pharmacy. The government supplied enough cannabis for Rosenfeld to smoke 12 joints every day.

Marijuana remained federally classified as a substance with no accepted medical use.

Rosenfeld had been sick since childhood. At age 10, doctors diagnosed him with multiple congenital cartilaginous exostoses, a rare disorder that causes bone tumors to form near the ends of long bones. According to a Justice Department account of his medical history, he was told that he might not survive into adulthood.

Doctors prescribed opioid painkillers, muscle relaxants, and anti-inflammatory medications. The drugs produced debilitating side effects without adequately controlling his condition.

He tried marijuana in 1971. Cannabis produced none of the euphoria he expected. Instead, he noticed his muscles relaxing, the swelling easing, and his ability to remain seated improving without pain forcing him to move. He has consistently maintained that cannabis does not get him high.

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Rosenfeld spent years assembling medical support and preparing a research proposal before making his case to an FDA advisory committee. Rosenfeld later said the appearance lasted 15 minutes and ended with all 15 physicians voting to approve his compassionate exemption.

Robert Randall, a glaucoma patient, had already forced the government to confront marijuana’s medical value in court. By 1974, conventional medications had stopped controlling the pressure destroying his vision. He had already lost sight in one eye when authorities arrested him for growing marijuana at his Washington, D.C., residence.

Randall admitted that the plants belonged to him. He argued that he needed cannabis to preserve what remained of his eyesight.

On November 24, 1976, a District of Columbia court accepted his medical-necessity defense. The court found that Randall’s interest in protecting his vision outweighed the government’s interest in punishing his marijuana possession.

Randall began receiving federally grown cannabis after his victory. When the government later cut off his supply, he sued. The resulting 1978 settlement established the compassionate program that admitted Rosenfeld four years later.

Rosenfeld received his first tin in 1982. The marijuana came from cannabis grown under federal authority. The National Institute on Drug Abuse managed the supply while the Drug Enforcement Administration controlled its transfer.

A later Justice Department filing described shipments containing a 75-day supply totaling 33 ounces. Rosenfeld’s approved use called for 12 marijuana cigarettes per day.

The arrangement lasted through multiple administrations and decades of federal enforcement against other medical cannabis patients. It also generated a paper trail that captured the government arguing against its own conduct.

In 2006, the Department of Transportation considered Rosenfeld’s complaint against American Airlines following a dispute over the documentation required for him to travel with cannabis.

The department acknowledged that his federal exemption entitled him to possess government-supplied marijuana during domestic travel. It then insisted that the cannabis was not medication. Federal officials called his participation research because marijuana remained in Schedule I.

By then, Rosenfeld had received the drug for nearly a quarter-century.

The Transportation Department decision cited federal law declaring that marijuana had no accepted medical use. In the same decision, the department discussed an American carrying government-supplied marijuana for the condition that placed him in the program.

Describing Rosenfeld as a research participant preserved the legal exception without forcing federal officials to accept cannabis as medicine, but the label did not make the program scientifically useful. When officials moved to end new admissions, they acknowledged that it had produced almost no meaningful clinical evidence.

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M O R E F R O M P O T C U L T U R E M A G A Z I N E

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A federal court later examined government memoranda concerning the program. Officials admitted that “little or no useful data” had been obtained and concluded that the single-patient arrangement would not settle questions about marijuana’s safety or effectiveness.

This was not a conventional clinical trial. The Kuromiya court described it as a single-patient IND conducted without controlled settings, blinding, or close FDA monitoring. Federal agencies distributed cannabis for years through a structure incapable of producing the scientific evidence officials later claimed was missing.

Applications began increasing in 1989. According to the federal record in Kuromiya v. United States, the annual number rose from fewer than five to approximately 40 after Randall worked with advocacy groups to expand access.

Many of the new applicants had AIDS. Cannabis could help patients manage nausea and wasting, but admitting them would have transformed a tiny exception into a much larger federal program.

James O. Mason, then head of the Public Health Service, told The Washington Post that distributing marijuana to more patients could weaken the government’s drug-war message.

“There would be a perception that this stuff can’t be so bad. It gives a bad signal.”

The government continued distributing cannabis while refusing to recognize it as medicine, then warned that broader access would send the wrong political message.

Health and Human Services approved the program’s closure to new patients in March 1992. The 13 people already receiving shipments were allowed to continue. Patients with pending applications received nothing.

Federal officials said alternative treatments were safer and more effective. They also cited supply concerns and the program’s failure to generate useful clinical evidence. The government remained uncomfortable with distributing marijuana to an increasing number of patients while federal law prohibited the plant.

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Officials said abruptly withdrawing cannabis could harm patients who had relied on the federal supply for years. The government therefore continued distributing a drug it refused to recognize as medicine.

The government planned to end its involvement through attrition, allowing existing patients to receive cannabis until they died or voluntarily left while refusing to admit anyone new.

In 1999, a federal judge reduced the entire arrangement to one sentence:

“Providing marijuana to eight people without legal consequence is somewhat strange,” the court wrote.

Even odder was the government’s failure to obtain “a single useful clinical result” after supplying patients for years.

A Justice Department filing recorded that Rosenfeld smoked 12 joints a day, experienced no high or reported adverse effects, and worked as a stockbroker handling multimillion-dollar accounts. Federal agencies still refused to recognize his experience as evidence supporting accepted medical use.

Rosenfeld carried federal documents establishing his exemption whenever he traveled with cannabis. The paperwork had to explain why a passenger was legally carrying marijuana supplied by the same government that prohibited it. His dispute with American Airlines proved that even federal authorization could not prevent confusion.

NIDA still contracts with the University of Mississippi to cultivate and process research cannabis, although DEA has approved additional growers. The federal inventory continues to include cannabis cigarettes prepared for human use.

As of 2023, the Marijuana Policy Project reported that the program was still supplying only one previously approved patient.

Federal policy shifted again in 2026. Qualifying state medical cannabis moved into Schedule III while adult-use cannabis remained in Schedule I. As Pot Culture Magazine previously reported, the government now applies two federal schedules to the same plant according to the legal lane through which it is sold.

Rosenfeld’s tin predates the new scheduling split by more than 40 years. It passed through the Reagan drug war, the Bush administration’s closure of the program, federal raids against medical growers, and Supreme Court decisions preserving federal prohibition.

The tin carried 300 joints and one federal confession: the government grew cannabis, rolled it, and supplied it to a patient while denying that the plant had accepted medical use.

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