“The U.S. Government Knew in 1976: Veterans, Glaucoma, and the Lost History of Federal Medical Marijuana”
They knew.
That’s the part that eats at you when you're digging through the archives—yellowed paper, declassified files, affidavits sealed with bureaucratic indifference. Somewhere between the stamp of the DEA and the silence of the VA lies a truth no one wants to touch: the U.S. government knew marijuana was medicine in 1976—and they kept it from the people who needed it most.
I’m a combat veteran. I’ve stared down insurgents in Iraq and demons in my own head. I’ve watched brothers fall, not just in war but in the aftermath—the bottle, the bullet, the prescription pad. I’ve lived the transition from warfighter to patient, from hero to liability, from volunteer to permanently and totally disabled. Cannabis didn’t just help me recover—it saved my life. And yet, for decades, our government told us it was a dangerous drug. Worse: they told us it was criminal. All the while, they were sending federally grown weed to a handful of patients through a secret pipeline.
You don’t have to take my word for it. Look at the court records from Randall v. United States, the 1976 case where Robert Randall— going blind from glaucoma—sued the federal government for access to cannabis because it was the only thing keeping him from the darkness. He won. The judge declared it was a matter of “medical necessity.” And what did the feds do? They started quietly shipping him marijuana cigarettes grown at the University of Mississippi. Not just him. Others followed: AIDS patients, cancer patients, people with spasticity. A whole group of ghost patients, forgotten by history, kept barely alive by tin cans filled with government weed.
Meanwhile, veterans like me? We got pills. Oxy, Seroquel, Trazodone. A cocktail of chemical restraint with a flag on top.
I’ve preserved the affidavits. I’ve read the testimony of Dr. John Merritt, Dr. Robert Hepler, Dr. Lester Grinspoon. These weren’t stoner scientists. They were board-certified ophthalmologists, Harvard psychiatrists, NIH grant-holders. They told the truth under oath: marijuana lowers intraocular pressure, eases nausea, calms the body, restores appetite, fights pain. The same truths people are still fighting to get acknowledged in 2025.
This isn’t just a story about marijuana. This is a story about betrayal. About a government that gaslit an entire population while preserving the truth for the privileged few. About a healthcare system that would rather classify cannabis users with “Cannabis Use Disorder” than admit it was wrong. About the way history gets buried unless someone is crazy—or angry—enough to dig it back up.
That’s what I’ve been doing. And I’m not the only one. We are archivists of an inconvenient truth. Veterans, activists, lawyers, researchers. We are the bastard children of the Compassionate IND program. We are the ones who saw the light in the closet and kicked the goddamn door open.
To anyone reading this: you were warned.
Not by me—by history.
🗂️ Source Integrity Statement
Every summary, breakdown, and historical analysis published in this series is rooted in authenticated primary documents archived within the Project 50 directory. These materials include—but are not limited to—official correspondence, press clippings, federal filings, FOIA records, and scanned mono series from the original medical cannabis pioneers.
If you have questions about the origin of any document, you are encouraged to:
Visit the Project 50 directory, where the source material is maintained and curated.
Verify descriptions and timelines against the original scans, filenames, and archival order.
Engage respectfully if you spot a gap—this is a living library, and contributions or corrections are welcomed with good intent.
This archive is built not for gatekeeping, but for guardianship. We share because the truth was buried—and now it’s time to unearth it together.
Ricardo Pereyda is a U.S. Army veteran, writer, and longtime advocate for veteran mental health and drug policy reform. Medically discharged and rated 100% permanently and totally disabled by the VA for PTSD, Ricardo chose cannabis over pharmaceuticals in 2009 and has spent the last decade fighting for others to have that same freedom. His work spans grassroots organizing, state and federal policy initiatives, and the preservation of historical records on medical cannabis use. A Flinn-Brown Fellow and principal author of The Green Paper, Ricardo has been featured in Rolling Stone, VICE, CNN, and Truthdig. He tells the truth even when it’s inconvenient—especially when it’s inconvenient.
