US gives marijuana to a select few patients

[n2doc]

Only four left in federal program

By Nigel Duara ASSOCIATED PRESS SEPTEMBER 29, 2011



EUGENE, Ore. - Sometime after midnight on a moonlit rural Oregon highway, a state trooper checking a car he had just pulled over found marijuana on a passenger.

The discovery was not surprising in a marijuana-friendly state like Oregon, but the 72-year-old woman’s defense was: She insisted the weed was legal and given to her by none other than the federal government.

A series of phone calls from a dubious trooper and his supervisor to federal authorities determined that the glaucoma patient was not joking - the US government does grow and provide pot to a select few people across the United States.

For the past three decades, Uncle Sam has been providing patients with some of the highest-grade marijuana around as part of a little-known program that grew out of a 1976 court settlement and created the country’s first legal marijuana smoker. The program once provided 14 people government pot. Now, there are four left.

http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2011/09/28/gives-marijuana-select-few-patients/aIRMKiA1UJhgszXyq70TxH/story.xml

[Occulus]

1. amazing that more do not know about this n/t