| Irvin Rosenfeld |
| Irv Rosenfeld, a 58-year-old stockbroker from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, doesn’t look like a record-setting pothead. But he’s smoked more than 120,000 U.S. government joints since 1982. |
On November 20, 1982, the United States federal government sent a Florida citizen 300 cannabis cigarettes in a shiny tin can.
The U.S. government, known the world over as a champion of preying on the sick with a weapon they call the “War On Drugs,” continues to send that same man the same ration of joints 29 years later.
This delivery of medicine is part of a “Compassionate Investigative New Drug” Program that exists to study “new drugs”, in this case, marijuana.
Over that 29-year period the government has performed no such study.
Irvin Rosenfeld of Florida will begin his 30th year of smoking cannabis cigarettes on November 20, 2011 — and he feels great.
| Dave’s Blog |
| This is a tobacco tin in which Irv receives 300 joints a month from the U.S. federal government. |
”Having used cannabis for a serious illness for almost three decades puts me in the record books as the longest in-your-face proof that the medical cannabis policy in the U.S. is illogical and mean,” Irv said from his stock brokerage office where he is a senior vice president of investments.
“While smoking cannabis is derided by my federal government, I have suffered no negative consequences from the experimentation, unobserved by them, that they have allowed me and three others to participate in,” Irv said.
Irv and three other federal cannabis patients were medically examined by Patients Out of Time. The nonprofit organization assumed the responsible agency, the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), would never dare conduct such study fearing rightfully that the findings would likely be and were found to be very positive for all four patients.
Such a study is thought by Congress to have never been completed yet has been published in 2002 and can be found at www.medicalcannabis.com. It is known as “The Missoula Study.”
| Andrew Itkoff/USA Today |
| Irvin Rosenfeld at work at Newbridge Securities. His employers support his use of medical marijuana while he’s on the job. |
”When the medical team finished their extensive three-day long study of my health, they declared me in excellent condition for my age and affliction,” Rosenfeld said. “For the federal government to continually assert that there is no adequate science proving therapeutic value to cannabis is absurd.
“I stand as a living, breathing example of just how wrong they are and how disingenuous their statements about the medical utility of cannabis have become,” Irv said.
“I intend to live another 30 years and I hope to see all patients afforded the same health care option that my government affords me,” Irv continued. “Please excuse me; it’s time to take my medicine.”
Irv is on the Board of Directors of Patients Out of Time, a 501c3 educational charity, as are the other three federally supplied cannabis patients.
A media conundrum continues on this issue: Is the US government telling us the truth when it continues to claim that marijuana is a dangerous drug and must be prohibited, or do we believe the tens of thousands of patients like Irv and his colleagues and the science that supports their lives?
That is the question.