Pubdate: Mon, 23 Mar 2009
Source: Daily News, The (Longview, WA)
Copyright: 2009 The Daily News
Contact: http://www.tdn.com/forms/letters.php
Website: http://www.tdn.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2621
Bookmark: http://mapinc.org/people/Elvy+Musikka
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mmj.htm (Marijuana - Medicinal)

OREGON MEDICAL MARIJUANA LAW COULD CHANGE

In 2007 more than 775,000 people were arrested in the United States 
for possession of marijuana. That year Elvy Musikka was among only 
four people to get their supply from the federal government.

Each year the 66-year-old Eugene resident receives several tins, each 
containing 300 marijuana cigarettes grown by the federal government 
at the University of Mississippi.

She qualified following her arrest for growing marijuana. Her doctors 
testified that without it she would go blind.

"I wanted to go to court because I really don't believe there is any 
government that has the right to demand blindness and suffering from 
their patients," Musikka said. "That's who they're supposed to protect."

Since moving to Oregon in 2005, Musikka has been in the debate over 
Oregon's medical marijuana law. In this year's Legislature 14 related 
bills are up for consideration.

Her first contact with marijuana came in 1975, when she was diagnosed 
with glaucoma. A doctor advised Musikka, born with congenital 
cataracts, to try marijuana after other remedies worked poorly.

She had never used it because she considered it dangerous but found 
it helped ease her pain more than any other treatment. She continued 
to smoke it but couldn't afford a reliable supply.

So she started growing her own.

With regular use of the drug, Musikka saw the amount of fluid that 
nourishes an eye's cornea, iris and lens fall to a level low enough 
for a corneal transplant.

She continued using marijuana to ease glaucoma pain.

"There was only one kid I ever got accosted by. He lived right next 
door to me, jumped the fence and stole my plants every time I was 
growing something," she said, referring to her years in Florida. "He 
knew if I called the cops I'd be the one going to jail."

After 12 years of illegal use, more eye surgery went wrong.

She lost vision in her left eye. The next year she was arrested for 
growing marijuana near the time when she applied to the Compassionate 
Investigative New Drug Program, run by the Food and Drug Administration.

Then only two patients had taken advantage of the program. Robert 
Randall beat growing charges after his lawyers argued that marijuana 
was a medical necessity to help with his glaucoma. He won, and in 
1976 sued the federal government in a case that ultimately led to the 
creation of the Compassionate IND Program.

Musikka entered the program in 1988.

The National Institute on Drug Abuse ran the Mississippi-based 
operation to grow uncontaminated marijuana "with consistent and 
predictable potency for use in biomedical research," spokeswoman 
Stephanie Older told the Register Guard newspaper in Eugene in an e-mail.

"NIDA has remained its only legal source."

Four years after Musikka joined the program the Bush administration 
suspended it but existing patients continued to be supplied.

Musikka said the low quality of the federal marijuana and Oregon's 
liberal medical marijuana law brought her West.

She first visited in 1998 when Measure 67, which allows patients with 
certain medical needs to grow and consume marijuana, was placed on 
the ballot. It passed with 56 percent of the vote, and today provides 
21,500 Oregonians with legal access.

Pending bills in the Legislature run the gamut from stricter to more 
relaxed laws.

Don Bishoff, an aide to Springfield Sen. Bill Morrisette, said the 
law could see major changes this year.

"Things are in a giant state of flux," he said. Morrisette is 
chairman of the Senate Human Services Committee and sponsor of Senate 
Bill 388, which would tighten rules on caregivers of medical 
marijuana patients and redefine the quantities of marijuana plants 
and hashish that patients can possess.

Musikka, who has toured the United States and Europe as a speaker for 
medical marijuana laws, worries about two bills that designate who in 
the state could grow marijuana for patients. She opposes a proposed 
state-operated growing operation because of the poor quality of 
marijuana she said she received from the federal government.

She said the product she receives from the government is years out of 
date: She prefers a proposal for series of dispensaries that would be 
cultivated by licensed growers.

"My whole fight is to make sure that patients have dignity, and most 
of all have their medicine, none of this having to grovel to 
everybody to get some pot because there's nowhere to go," she said.