MEDICINAL POT

In 1973, Robert Randall smoked the joint that transformed his life.

He had suffered from glaucoma since his teens, when it was wrongly believed
to be simple eyestrain. Finally diagnosed at the age of 24, Randall was
told he'd go blind in two to five years, unless medicines provided by his
ophthalmologist slowed the disease's progress. Randall had already lost a
significant amount of his sight, and he learned to recognize the signs of
elevated pressure in his eye: milky vision, halos around lights, or
blinding "white-outs."

It was then, as the doctor struggled to control the disease with
conventional medicines, that Randall discovered his own treatment.

One night he was relaxing in his Virginia apartment, smoking a marijuana
cigarette given to him by a friend. Looking out the windows of the
apartment, he realized that the telltale halo around a nearby street light
had disappeared.

He immediately drew a connection between the joint and an easing of his
glaucoma symptoms - a connection later verified by medical testing, but
still controversial.

In the following decades, Randall and his partner, Alice O'Leary, found
themselves at the forefront of a battle to legalize marijuana for medicinal
use. They have chronicled their struggle, and that of others, in a new
book, "Marijuana Rx: The Patient's Fight for Medicinal Pot" (Thunder's
Mouth Press, $14.95).

The couple now live in Sarasota, where Randall smokes marijuana supplied by
the federal government. He was the first person in the United States to be
allowed legal access to the plant for medicinal purposes, and said he is
one of eight allowed to smoke Uncle Sam's pot.

Today, Randall also battles another foe: AIDS.

A close brush with death in 1995 prompted him and O'Leary to review their
journals and carefully reconstruct the history of their quest.

"I think both of us have always wanted to write a book. Certainly we've met
a lot of fascinating people along the way, of all kinds," Randall said.
"When you're suddenly faced with a terminal illness and you think you're
going to die, you say, 'That was the one thing I really wanted to do.' "

Randall is a Sarasota native who attended the University of South Florida
in the late 1960s. Like many college students in that era, he was
introduced to marijuana as a recreational drug.

He moved to Washington, D.C., in 1971, hoping to become a political speech
writer. He already knew O'Leary from Sarasota, where she had moved as a
child, and O'Leary joined him in Washington in 1973.

The two settled into an apartment, where Randall clandestinely used
marijuana to relieve the high pressure in his eyeballs.

Then, in 1975, he and O'Leary were busted by D.C. police, who saw marijuana
plants growing on their sundeck.

In the following years, as the two successfully fought criminal charges and
broadened their campaign, they came in contact with legions of players:
Doctors reluctant to support the medical use of marijuana, and doctors who
believed in it; bureaucrats who refused to consider pot a beneficial drug,
and bureaucrats who helped Randall get it; lawmakers and fellow patients.

In their book, they record in painstaking detail their encounters with
advocates as unlikely as Newt Gingrich, who in his early career backed an
effort to provide medical marijuana to patients in Georgia.

One might expect arch opposition to medical marijuana from conservatives.
But Randall said many see the issue as one of inappropriate government
intervention into private affairs between a doctor and patient.

Lyn Nofziger, a prominent Republican and former director of communication
and speech writer in the Reagan administration, wrote the foreword for
Randall and O'Leary's book. Nofziger's family turned to marijuana when his
grown daughter was fighting the effects of chemotherapy for lymph cancer.

Advocates for legalizing marijuana, meanwhile, often blur the distinction
between medical and recreational use, Randall said.

"If anything this experience has made me profoundly more conservative, with
an inclination to distrust government and not believe they're going to do
the right thing," he said.

Today, Randall gets his marijuana with prescriptions written by his eye
doctor in Washington. It is shipped to a pharmacy in Sarasota, where
Randall picks it up, paying only a processing fee to the pharmacy.

Randall said he smokes 10 of the government-rolled cigarettes each day.

"I don't get high. I guess some people would think that was positive and
some people would think that was negative - but it certainly lowers my eye
pressure," he said.

"The fact that it's almost 2000 and I can still see is astonishing. I
expected to be blind by the time I was 30."

Opponents of medical marijuana argue that it sets the stage for broader
legalization of drugs. They also charge that synthetic derivatives of
marijuana are as effective in treating illness.

The American Academy of Ophthalmology's Committee on Drugs says there is
"no scientifically verifiable evidence that the use of marijuana is safe
and effective in the treatment of glaucoma."

Although there is evidence that marijuana lowers pressure in the eye, there
are no studies that show it can safely lower pressure enough to prevent
damage to the optic nerve, the academy says. And unhealthy side effects may
be generated by smoking for extended periods.

However, the academy said a long-term clinical study to test the safety and
efficacy of the plant "appears appropriate."

Under physicians' supervision, Randall has tried THC - the ingredient in
marijuana that creates the "high" - in pills and injections. He said it
does not produce the same results.

In fact, Randall and O'Leary say, inhalation is what makes marijuana
rapidly accessible to the body. Drugs based on components of raw marijuana
do not work as well, they contend.

In 1994, another bomb fell. Randall, who is bisexual, learned that he has
AIDS. Soon afterward, he suspended his marijuana use, believing he would
die. (O'Leary has tested negative for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.)

But with the advent of powerful anti-viral drugs, Randall realized that he
had a future after all. He resumed marijuana use in 1996, and found
immediately that it made him feel "normal."

He said he has since suffered few side ffects from the two anti-viral drugs
he takes, though he has struggled with recurrent pancreatitis.

Randall and O'Leary hope their book helps define the issue of medical pot
use and helps move the campaign forward. Several states have passed laws
approving medical marijuana use, and a 1994 poll by the American Civil
Liberties Union - cited by the couple in their book - showed 84 percent of
Americans believe marijuana should be available by prescription.

But the issue is far from resolved. The federal government has stopped
approving pot use by individual patients - which is why only eight get
government pot legally - and has fought state efforts to legalize medicinal
marijuana.

Although clubs exist in cities such as Los Angeles to provide pot to those
who are medically needy, they're technically illegal.

And there are still thousands of people who could benefit from smoking the
plant but who can't get it, Randall and O'Leary said.

"It's both humbling and frightening because I could have been one of those
people very easily," Randall said.

"People would think this is odd if you've got glaucoma and AIDS, but I've
had an incredibly lucky life. At those moments when something really needed
to happen, the right person showed up, or the right substance showed up,"
he said. "But the problem is, I'm unique."