How marijuana became legal

[cnn-photo-caption image=http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2009/HEALTH/10/21/medical.marijuana.policy/art.marijuana.gi.jpg caption="A federal move could encourage other states to make their own laws allowing medical marijuana use. "]

Roger Parloff
Fortune Magazine

When Irvin Rosenfeld, 56, picks me up at the Fort Lauderdale airport, his SUV reeks of marijuana. The vice president for sales at a local brokerage firm, Rosenfeld has been smoking 10 to 12 marijuana cigarettes a day for 38 years, he says.

That's probably unusual in itself, but what makes Rosenfeld exceptional is that for the past 27 years, he has been copping his weed directly from the United States government.

Every 25 days Rosenfeld goes to a pharmacy and picks up a tin of 300 federally grown and rolled cigarettes that have been sent there for him by the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA), acting with approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

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