PRINCIPLED RESISTANCE: The Legacy of Robert Randall & Alice O’Leary Randall
They weren’t radicals.
They were gardeners.
Tending to truth in a field of federal neglect.
Robert C. Randall didn’t set out to become a cannabis icon. He was a man with a degenerative eye disease—glaucoma—and a stack of scientific studies from NORML and the Library of Congress. What he and Alice found wasn’t just data; it was a lifeline. Research dating back to the 1970s showed that cannabis could reduce intraocular pressure, citing ongoing studies at UCLA. But cannabis, at the time, was illegal. So Robert did what any principled citizen would do: he challenged the law with honesty and evidence after facing charges from the government.
When the cops came for his plants while he and Alice were out of town, they left a calling card. He didn’t hide. He brought them evidence of his own—and a doctor’s testimony.
In 1976, United States v. Randall made history: the first legal victory in America recognizing the medical necessity of cannabis.
That moment wasn’t just a win in court. It was a declaration of Principled Resistance—the kind that doesn’t flinch under surveillance, stigma, or systemic inertia.
Together, Robert and Alice didn’t just fight for a single patient’s rights. They built a national framework for what compassionate access should look like. They co-authored white papers, addressed Congress, and held federal agencies accountable—with science. With logic. With love.
They founded the group Alliance for Cannabis Therapeutics (ACT) in 1981, and played instrumental roles in others, organizing physicians and patients into a movement grounded in dignity and documentation. They urged multiple presidential administrations, from Carter to Clinton, to act with humanity. And when the doors were slammed shut, they opened new ones—internationally, educationally, and spiritually.
Robert passed away in 2001. After some rest, Alice kept going.
In the decades since, Alice O’Leary Randall has preserved their shared archive, not as relics of the past, but as tools for the present. She trained a new generation of advocates. She gave veterans, like myself, permission to pick up the torch—and reminded us we weren’t the first to walk into this storm armed only with truth.
When people say the cannabis movement has no elders, they forget the Randalls. They forget all the IND patients who fought to get their voices heard, and to be on the record defending what really matters.
When governments say there is no precedent, they ignore the 1976 federal decision on this issue, and many others which reveal inconvenient truths. .
And when skeptics say veterans are “weaponizing” their trauma for policy change, they erase the decades of principled groundwork that made even our smallest victories possible.
Principled Resistance is not about noise.
It’s about narrative integrity.
It’s what Robert and Alice stood for—facing an unjust law not with violence, but with verified science, testimony, and the deepest belief that democracy must include the right to heal.
To this day, the federal government grows cannabis in Mississippi and sends it to a handful of surviving IND patients, thanks to what Robert and Alice did. Yet it denies the same access to veterans, cancer patients, and millions more.
That contradiction isn’t just policy failure.
It’s moral failure.
And so we resist.
Not because we hate the system,
But because we love the people it has forgotten.
Principled Resistance is the connective tissue between the Randalls and us.
It’s how we remember.
It’s how we reclaim.
It’s how we rise.
