Pubdate: Thu, 12 Mar 2015
Source: Los Angeles Times (CA)
Copyright: 2015 Los Angeles Times
Contact:  http://www.latimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/248
Author: Evan Halper

THE DEA GIVING AWAY POT? IT CAN'T BE - CANNABIS?

Boca Raton, Fla. - The interior of Irvin Rosenfeld's Toyota 4Runner 
reeks of marijuana. A tin stuffed with hundreds of joints lies in the 
trunk, and a bag full of them is stored in the door pocket.

On a recent weekday, the 62-year-old stockbroker stopped at a red 
light and took a drag. His exhale filled the cabin with smoke. It was 
his fourth joint that day. It wasn't yet lunchtime.

"This car has 80,000 miles on it," Rosenfeld announced between puffs, 
stray ash landing softly on the battered towel he drapes over his 
pleated brown trousers and red tie. "I haven't gotten into one accident."

Rosenfeld would smoke five or six more joints by day's end. In 
between, he would trade tens of thousands of dollars in stocks. Some 
days, the broker moves millions around, pausing occasionally to steal 
drags of marijuana from the smokeless vapor pen that tides him over indoors.

Clients have given their blessing to his 10-joint-a-day habit.

So has the Drug Enforcement Administration.

The federal agency at the forefront of the war on drugs is normally 
unyielding in its view that marijuana has no valid medical use. But 
it not only gives permission to Rosenfeld to light up any place 
cigarettes are allowed, but it also acts as his dealer.

Rosenfeld gets that special treatment because he has a rare bone 
disorder that gives him a lot of pain. He is one of only two people 
in the nation still actively involved in a federal program that 
supplies marijuana free to patients suffering from certain diseases.

The government harvests infrequently and Rosenfeld's current stash 
came out of the ground six years ago. Not exactly prime bud. But good 
enough that in three decades he has consumed about 216 pounds - 
hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth - to ease his pain.

"I am getting my money's worth out of my taxes, that's for sure," he 
said. "I am one of the few people in this country who never complains 
about paying them."

The program started in 1976 when Robert Randall of Florida convinced 
a court that pot was essential to treating his glaucoma. Rather than 
open the door to patients growing their own marijuana, drug officials 
chose to supply it to Randall.

Rosenfeld was the next to secure the same deal, and 11 more patients 
would trickle in, including the other patient the government still 
supplies, Elvy Musikka, an Oregonian with glaucoma. A doctor 
authorized by the government to treat Rosenfeld with marijuana writes 
his prescriptions and gives him regular checkups.

The pot comes from a farm in Mississippi run by the National 
Institute on Drug Abuse, which periodically sends the weed by FedEx 
to Rosenfeld's pharmacy.

The marijuana is rolled tightly into joints that are freeze-dried and 
packed 300 to a container. The joints come with 14 pages of 
instructions on how to properly rehydrate them - most of which 
Rosenfeld ignores. Instead, he unrolls them, moistens their contents 
in plastic bags lined with wet paper towels and later rolls them back 
into joints.

After Rosenfeld received his first shipment, he recalled, he saw a 
commercial in which FedEx boasted, "We ship anything." He pointed to 
the bag of federal pot he was holding and told his wife, Debbie, 
"That's a true statement."

In the early 1990s, the Food and Drug Administration ruled that 
scores of AIDS patients should be given access to the program. 
Thousands might have signed up, but the administration of President 
George H.W. Bush changed the policy and halted the program.

Since then, the government has avoided keeping track of Rosenfeld's 
pot smoking.

"The government was never comfortable with this program," said Rick 
Doblin, executive director of the Multidisciplinary Assn. for 
Psychedelic Studies, a Santa Cruz-based group that is lobbying to 
change federal restrictions that have pushed most major medical 
marijuana research abroad.

"They are just waiting for all the people in it to die.... They 
purposely are not gathering data," Doblin said.

Federal officials said patient privacy laws prohibited them from 
discussing whether they monitor Rosenfeld and Musikka.

Rosenfeld says the drug relieves pain that is otherwise so intense 
that he can sit or walk for only short stretches. Because so few 
studies have been done on the medical effects of pot, no one can say 
for certain why it works for him. Nor do researchers understand why 
he never seems stoned.

A neurologist who treated Rosenfeld for six years, Juan 
Sanchez-Ramos, attributes it to a tolerance created from so much 
smoking, along with the low potency of government pot.

"Whenever he came to my office, he wasn't out of it or spacey," said 
Sanchez-Ramos, who has Rosenfeld's permission to discuss his case. 
"He was like your prototypical stockbroker."

The 10-page federal protocol Rosenfeld carries with him designates 
that he may smoke marijuana with impunity. It says he can drive so 
long as he is not intoxicated.

These days, Rosenfeld no longer stands out for using pot to treat an 
ailment. About 1 million Americans do so - in 23 states and the 
District of Columbia, which allow at least the medical use of marijuana.

The federal government's long-standing consent to Rosenfeld's drug 
use has attracted renewed attention as Congress softens its 
opposition to marijuana and a growing number of doctors denounce drug 
policies that prevent research aimed at turning pot into a properly 
controlled pharmaceutical.

Rosenfeld goes about his day like any other Floridian - except for 
the marijuana.

He plays in a softball league. He doesn't light up until the other 
players are enjoying their postgame beer.

He donates his time to an organization that teaches disabled kids how 
to sail. He doesn't smoke around children and waits until he drives 
away to puff on a joint.

He travels cross-country. He carries a note when he flies that 
directs airline security to ignore the cache of pot in his luggage.

Being in so rare a category does sometimes lead to problems in this 
state, where pot is banned altogether. Rosenfeld recalls a recent 
run-in with DEA agents based in the office park where he worked.

"I was resting in my car at lunchtime, having my usual two joints, 
and all of a sudden there is pounding on all four windows," Rosenfeld 
said. "I opened my eyes and the car was surrounded. One big guy puts 
a gold badge against the window and announced I was under arrest."

Rosenfeld told them they were mistaken. They told him they were the DEA.

"I said, 'Great. You should be familiar with my program!' " Rosenfeld 
said. It got weirder for the agents when Rosenfeld pulled out his bag 
of joints with the prescription on it, and then walked around to the 
back of his car to show them the tin can stuffed with marijuana.

Along with it, he handed over a yellowing copy of Newsweek magazine. 
Bill Clinton's sexual harassment accuser, Paula Jones, was on the 
cover. Tucked inside the issue was a story about Rosenfeld.

Rosenfeld jokes that he is resented at work because he won't share 
his marijuana stash, but one person who is not eager to sample it is 
Debbie Rosenfeld. Over the years, she developed an allergy to 
cannabis. Ultimately, living together became untenable for the 
couple. They separated.

Every one of Irvin Rosenfeld's 250 clients at the investment firm 
Newbridge Securities knows he's a pot smoker, he said. He brings it 
up by asking them whether they know anybody who has taken on the 
federal government and won. He tells them he has, and promises to use 
that same gumption in making them money.

"If you like the idea of that, I say, then use me as your 
stockbroker," Rosenfeld said. "If you don't like the idea of me using 
10 cannabis cigarettes a day for my bone disorder, then fine, have a 
great life."

The owners of Newbridge declined to be interviewed and in the past 
asked Rosenfeld not to reveal where he worked. A few months ago the 
firm launched a fund that invests exclusively in medical marijuana 
businesses and appointed Rosenfeld an advisor to it. Since then, 
Newbridge's reservations about being linked to Rosenfeld disappeared.

Before Rosenfeld headed back into his office to make afternoon 
trades, he sat on a plush leather couch in a common area drawing hits 
from his vapor pen while cradling the open canister crammed with 
joints. Buttoned-down colleagues shuffled by.

Not one of them did a double take.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom