D.C. Superior Court accepts Randall’s medical-necessity defence

Robert Randall turned a prosecution for growing cannabis into the first successful medical-necessity defence of its kind in the United States. His case then helped create a federal programme that supplied a small number of patients with government-grown cannabis.

Glaucoma and a raid

Randall had glaucoma, a progressive disease that threatened his sight. Conventional treatment had not provided lasting relief. After finding that cannabis reduced his symptoms, he grew plants to maintain a supply. Police raided his home in August 1975.

Faced with a possession charge following discovery of his plants, Randall argued that using cannabis was necessary to preserve his vision. On 24 November 1976, Judge James A. Washington of the District of Columbia Superior Court accepted the necessity defence and ruled in his favour.

From acquittal to federal supply

Initial federally authorised supplies reached Randall through ophthalmologist John Merritt in November 1976. Alice O’Leary’s recollection describes medical tests with recently received cannabis on the morning the criminal decision arrived.

In 1978, difficulties continuing treatment prompted a separate civil suit against federal agencies. The settlement restored supply under a new IND arrangement and helped establish the Compassionate IND pathway. The criminal acquittal and this later agreement were different legal events.

Under the programme, approved patients received cannabis grown for the federal government at the University of Mississippi and administered through the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Eligibility initially covered conditions such as glaucoma and later expanded to include people with AIDS.

A route for very few

The programme never became general medical legalisation. Wikipedia records 43 approvals, but says 28 people whose doctors completed the paperwork never received cannabis. At most fifteen patients were supplied at one time.

The federal government stopped admitting new patients in 1992. Four people were still receiving its cannabis in 2011. The programme therefore preserved an extraordinary contradiction: federal law kept cannabis in Schedule I while federal agencies grew and distributed it to selected patients.

Closing the programme during the AIDS epidemic also mattered politically. Patients and advocates seeking relief from anorexia and wasting increasingly built medical-cannabis campaigns outside this tightly controlled federal route.

A limited precedent

The ruling accepted Randall’s necessity defence on the evidence of his own case. Federal supply depended on individual authorisation rather than a general right to possess or cultivate cannabis. His campaign with Alice O’Leary then sought to extend practical access to other patients. Broader state medical access later developed through measures such as California’s 1996 initiative.^[1][2][3][4]