Medical Cannabis & AIDS: The First Legal Patient
How a Backwoods Texas Boy Started a Movement
Enjoy this blog on audio.
February 12th will mark the 34th anniversary of Steve Loup’s death. Who is Steve Loup, you ask? Steve was America’s first AIDS patient to acquire legal cannabis from the federal government.
Steve Loup was from the backwoods of Texas. From all reports, he was an angry alcoholic and IV drug user who contracted AIDS from a dirty needle. Steve’s diagnosis intensified his anger to rage, which only seemed to accelerate his decline. He lost weight rapidly and fell into a coma where he had a near-death experience. As he tried to cross the black river before him, a man with no face appeared and told him, “Not yet, not yet.”
Steve awoke from the coma transformed. “No booze. No drugs. No anger. No fear. Like I woke from a bad dream, happy,” he said. He weighed just 80lbs, and a friend suggested he try cannabis to boost his appetite. He confounded his doctors by regaining nearly all his weight. Steve realized cannabis was saving his life, and he began to see his mission. He began to understand why he was turned away from the River Styx.
Steve began frantically searching for Robert Randall and the Alliance for Cannabis Therapeutics (ACT). In an age before the Internet and Google, this wasn’t easy. He called the local police, the Texas Rangers, and the FDA, and, in a moment of absolute chutzpah, Steve called the San Antonio DEA office, asking everyone how he could get legal medical marijuana.
But it seems Steve only succeeded in putting a target on his back. He was arrested in March 1989 for cannabis possession. Without cannabis, he began to lose weight again and ended up back in the hospital. Upon his release, he started his search all over again for “that man who smokes legal medical marijuana,” trolling back through the same agencies and law enforcement officials. This time, it worked. He reached an agent in the DEA office who listened to his story, told him Robert’s full name, and even gave him Robert’s phone number. It was early October 1989.
ACT first heard from AIDS patients as early as 1983. They would call to say how helpful cannabis was in keeping up their weight, fighting the constant body aches, and allowing sleep. We would ask each of them if they wanted to apply for legal marijuana from the federal government through the Compassionate IND program, the only way to obtain legal cannabis at the time. Their reply was always the same—no time, just wanted you to know.
Steve was exactly the opposite. He wanted legal marijuana, and he wanted the world to know that it could help AIDS patients achieve a better quality of life.
Naturally, we helped. Steve had an excellent support network with the San Antonio AIDS Foundation. Robert contacted them and found a doctor willing to sponsor Steve’s Compassionate IND application, which Robert prepared. By the end of October, the IND had been filed with the FDA. It was approved on December 13th.
Robert quickly spread the news of this success, and Steve’s dream was coming true — he was telling the world that cannabis could help people with AIDS. The DEA dragged its feet, and it would be more than a month before legal cannabis arrived. Steve was hospitalized at the time, but the VA hospital, to its credit, arranged for Steve to use cannabis even though he was hospitalized. On January 29, 1990, Steve lit up his first legal marijuana cigarette. Hospital constraints limited press coverage, but a few days later, Steve was released from the hospital, and a press conference was held at the San Antonio AIDS Foundation. The longest user of federal marijuana, Robert, and the newest, Steve, lit up their legal marijuana cigarettes together. The press, predictably, loved it. Steve got his wish, and his story circled the globe.
Having accomplished his mission, Steve began preparing for his next journey to the River Styx. Released from the hospital, enjoying his legal cannabis, Steve returned to his home in the woods and his beloved dog, Cool Breeze, CB for short. Just two weeks after his victory, Steve died on February 12, 1990.
In our book Marijuana Rx: The Early Years (1976-1996), Robert wrote, “It did not take a prophet to know the gay AIDS community would rapidly rally to medical marijuana. The resulting release of energy would be far more intense than anything generated by lone glaucoma patients or scattered, near-death cancer patients.” In fact, the energy would put the final nail in the coffin of the federal government’s constant lie that anyone “with a note from their doctor” could get legal, medical marijuana.
Steve’s short but critical time on the medical cannabis stage was a massive turning point for the movement. The AIDS community infused the medical cannabis movement with an energy that belied their prognosis. In the early 1990s, AIDS was terminal. People with AIDS had nothing to lose, and they loudly demanded legal access to medical cannabis. We were on a path that led directly and with few obstructions to California’s Prop 215. ❧
Great. Thanks for sharing!
Putting this in my newsletter this week