Despite the continued denials from the U.S. federal government — and its absurdly erroneous classification of cannabis as a Schedule I substance, meaning it by definition has a high potential for abuse and no accepted medical uses — the feds themselves have been giving out free marijuana to a limited group of patients for 30 years.

The program had grown to close to 30 patients at its height, but in 1992 stopped accepting any new participants, during the George H.W. Bush Administration.

Activists speculated that happened because of the advent of the HIV/AIDS crisis; with the widespread need of such patients for medicinal cannabis, pot’s medical usefulness could have become uncomfortably obvious to the public at large once hundreds or thousands of people had permission to use it.

Despite the program not having accepted any new patients for more than 20 years, the four surviving federal medical marijuana patients still get their 300 (stale, low-quality) joints a month, and will until they die. Never mind that it’s only 3.5 percent THC (maybe that’s why the federal government recommends its patients use 10 “marijuana cigarettes” a day!) plus being 10 years old and stale as shit by the time the patients receive it.