What Compassion?
The Tampa Times (Tampa, FL) – Mon, May 30, 1977
Title: “But the law sees that another guy gets some pot every week”
📰 Composition & Style
This piece is one of the most nuanced and layered in the media coverage of Robert Randall. It straddles the line between feature profile and exposé, with a tone that feels both personal and politically charged. Written by Dale Wilson, it’s less about whether Randall should receive medical marijuana and more about how his story complicates the federal position.
The headline itself—"But the law sees that another guy gets some pot every week"—immediately sets up a contrast: this isn’t about recreational use or back-alley dealings. It’s about a guy in a suit with a prescription and a weekly pickup.
🧠 Content Breakdown
Randall is portrayed as a medical outlier—not a street dealer, not a stoner, but a federal outlier navigating bureaucratic loopholes to stay out of prison and retain his eyesight.
He openly discusses calling his doctor to confirm his diagnosis and need—offering a very human, clinical narrative.
The article emphasizes the strange double life he’s living: legally blind, federally supplied pot smoker, frequent flyer to legislative hearings, and political lightning rod.
🏛️ Policy + Institutional Critique
Randall critiques the DARAC (Drug Abuse Research Advisory Committee), noting that the people making decisions on cannabis policy “have no expertise in dealing with glaucoma.”
He exposes the deliberate slowness of federal decision-making. By this time, even though Randall had been legally receiving cannabis for months, the FDA and DEA were beginning to backpedal—possibly realizing the long-term policy implications of his case.
📉 Federal Retrenchment
This article marks the start of a government campaign to silence Randall. The coverage hints at federal discomfort with how visible and outspoken he’s become:
“In the past two weeks Randall traveled to Illinois pressing for reform, spoke in Minnesota to the Maine legislature…”
His public advocacy—and his willingness to expose internal federal delays and failures—made him a liability to the quiet status quo. Compassion gave way to caution. Silence became the objective.
1. Tone as Trojan Horse
Dale Wilson writes with a blend of intimacy and irony—Randall’s “weekly pickup” is framed almost like a grocery run, yet the implications are explosive. That framing lulls the reader into accepting the absurdity before they realize it’s an indictment of federal policy.
2. The “Living Contradiction” Frame
Randall is both an everyman and an anomaly:
Everyman → talks to his doctor, deals with a chronic condition, tries to live normally.
Anomaly → legally blind, flies around the country lobbying legislatures, federally supplied with contraband.
That tension forces the reader to question why the exception exists for him—but not others.
3. Institutional Soft Spots
His critique of DARAC is surgical—identifying that the decision-making body has no medical expertise in his conditionundermines the government’s authority without needing to shout. It’s the policy equivalent of pulling a loose thread in a suit jacket.
4. Early Federal Panic
By spring ’77, the FDA and DEA seem to have realized they’d set a precedent that could spiral. This profile captures the moment before the drawbridge goes up—he’s still in the program, still talking, but the agencies are quietly plotting containment.
5. The Subtle Silencing Campaign
The piece notes his rapid-fire advocacy tour—Illinois, Minnesota, Maine—then lets the reader connect the dots: this is why the feds are uneasy. Every podium he stands at makes it harder for them to treat his case as a one-off.
If the Berkshire Eagle article was the compassionate embrace, this is the cold shoulder beginning. The narrative arc here moves from “look at this remarkable exception” to “how do we make him less visible?”
