Alice O'Leary, co-founder of the Alliance for Cannabis Therapeutics, the first patient organization in the US to advocate for therapeutic cannabis since its removal from medicine in 1941, announced, "there are no longer seven surviving federally supplied cannabis patients."The audience, packed into a hotel ballroom in Santa Barbara, CA, was there to honor the memory and leadership of Robert Randall, the first patient in the modern US to receive medical marijuana from the US government.

An event of "The Fourth National Clinical Conference on Cannabis Therapeutics" the evening dinner presentation met with the sincere resolve on the part of attendees to further the work of the last five federally supplied cannabis patients, which is to see medical marijuana returned to the treatment options of medical professionals.

A major force in the re-education of medical doctors and registered nurses in the US to therapeutic cannabis protocols is the national non-profit Patients Out of Time. That organization studied the health of long-term legal cannabis use by four of the living federal patients and published the results, which were all positive. The study authors concluded, "Cannabis smoking, even of a crude, low-grade product, provides effective symptomatic relief of pain,muscle spasms, and intraocular pressure elevations in selected patients failing other modes of treatment."

"I suppose some in the federal government are disappointed that these patients have done so well for so long using an inferior grade of medicine. The responsible agencies utter lack of concern for these patients should be an embarrassment, but my guts tell me they just wish instead of five there were none," said Al Byrne, a conference organizer and co-founder of Patients Out of Time.