Join “Granny” Lisa Kraft and Peggy “The Enforcer” Jones as they interview fellow veteran Al Byrne.
Al Byrne is a graduate of Notre Dame with a degree in economics, where he received his Navy commission after four years in ROTC.
Al was a starting wing for three years with the ND Rugby team, married, and had two children.
His naval career spanned 24 years with duty on a destroyer, multiple US duty station assignments, a tour in-country Vietnam, and three years as a navy Seabee. The son of a cancer patient, he saw his dad helped by medical cannabis in 1967 and since that time has, in the navy and since, advocated for cannabis use for the ill.
Al served as an Executive Director, Board member, and national secretary of NORML from 1989 to 1994 and was instrumental in introducing the conversation concerning cannabis use by patients to the US discourse. To accomplish effective advocacy, Al co-founded Patients Out of Time with the mission of educating US healthcare professionals and the US public about the therapeutic value of cannabis. This organization was the first in the world, in an accredited setting, to provide medicinal cannabis education in public venues.
To further this work, Al co-founded Veterans for Medical Cannabis Access in 2007, the organization responsible for having the Veterans Health Administration declare, by Directive, that cannabis was medicine and shall be treated as such by all VHA personnel in July of 2010.
Al is also the co-host of Veterans’ Voices, a long-running radio/podcast program that interviews Vets, their caregivers, families, and friends about the use of cannabis by Veterans that has helped them reduce or eliminate addictive VHA-prescribed pharmacy products. Al is a member of the Veterans Action Council, dedicated to providing equality for all military patients, veterans, or active duty in their use of cannabis within all VHA facilities in the US and territories. Al is the author of – “For Country and Cannabis,” published in 2023.
Al is an animal lover and lives with Golden Retrievers in Tate’s Hell State Forest in northwest Florida.
Host of Vets Chatting with Granny Lisa, Co-Hosts on Vets Coming Clean, Left-Overs, and has appeared on several other podcasts.
She currently has co-authored 'Leave No Veteran Behind'
