DC Patients' Cooperative to Announce Operations Hiatus Until City Shows Leadership

Medicine to Be Used on Steps of City Hall in Protest of Failing Program

Patient Advocate and Author Irvin Rosenfeld to Attend in Solidarity with DC's Illegal Medical 'Marijuana' Patients  

WASHINGTON, July 21, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- On the 1-year anniversary of Congress approving the District of Columbia's medical cannabis program, the District of Columbia Patients' Cooperative (DCPC), a District-based non-profit organization and Safe Access DC, the Washington, D.C. chapter of Americans for Safe Access, will hold a press conference on Wednesday, July 27, 2011 at 9 a.m. outside of the John A. Wilson Building, 1350 Pennsylvania Ave. NW.   The press conference intends to shine a light on DC's non-functioning medical marijuana program and feature patients who are demanding that the District's medical cannabis patients be granted legal protections to grow their own medicine.

"The patients of the District have waited longer than any other citizens in America for their ballot-approved medical cannabis," says Nikolas Schiller, Secretary of DCPC, and the organization's only paid staff member, who will be losing his job at the press event because of the District government's inaction.  "Patients and investors have lost patience and while you don't see it on the news, people are suffering because our local government went AWOL. It is time for emergency legislation to give patients basic legal protections while the city figures out how to run a burdensome medical marijuana program."

"Patient home cultivation is what began the medical cannabis movement in America, and that movement began here in Washington, DC. Robert Randall, a patient with severe glaucoma, was caught growing his own medicine at his apartment in Capitol Hill in the late 1970s and decided to fight back, successfully suing the federal government in order to legally obtain a supply of medicine his entire life," says Kayley Whalen of Safe Access DC which is co-sponsoring the press event. "The federal program his activism created was the Compassionate Investigative New Drug Program. It's a program that was discontinued because Mr. Randall wanted HIV/AIDS patients to have safe access, and President George H.W. Bush chose to end the program instead of extending it to patients in need. Today there are four living federal medical cannabis patients, one of whom is Irvin Rosenfeld," said Whalen.

Mr. Rosenfeld of Fort Lauderdale, Florida is a Board member of Patients Out of Time, an International Patient Advocacy Non-Profit Organization and is one of the four (4) living federal medical cannabis patients in America will attend the press conference.  He has been receiving medical cannabis from the government for almost 30 years.  Outlined in his book "My Medicine," Mr. Rosenfeld explains how medical cannabis saved his life and how the current prohibitions on home cultivation harm more people than they help.  Mr. Rosenfeld was also a friend of Robert Randall and will recall how the medical marijuana movement in DC began. More information at http://www.dcpatients.org

CONTACT:  Nikolas Schiller, +1-202-460-0032, [email protected]

SOURCE DC Patients' Cooperative