Pubdate: Thu, 29 Sep 2011 Source: Tampa Tribune (FL) Copyright: 2011 The Tribune Co. Contact: http://www2.tbo.com/static/tools/contact-us/ Website: http://www.tampatrib.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/446 U.S. SUPPLIES 4 WITH POT EUGENE, Ore. -- Sometime after midnight on a moonlit rural Oregon highway, a state trooper checking a car he had just pulled over found pot on a passenger. The discovery was not surprising in a marijuana-friendly state like Oregon, but the 72-year-old woman's defense was: She insisted the weed was legal and given to her by the federal government. A series of phone calls from a dubious trooper and his supervisor to federal authorities determined that the glaucoma patient was not joking: The U.S. government does grow and provide pot to a select few people across the United States. For the past three decades, Uncle Sam has been providing patients with some of the highest grade marijuana around as part of a little-known program that grew out of a 1976 court settlement and created the country's first legal pot smoker. The program once provided 14 people government pot. Now, there are four left. The program is no longer accepting new patients, and public health authorities have concluded that there was no scientific value to it, said Steven Gust of the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse. The government has continued to supply the marijuana "for compassionate reasons," Gust said. One of the recipients is Elvy Musikka, the chatty Oregon woman. A vocal marijuana advocate, Musikka relies on the pot to keep her glaucoma under control. She entered the program in 1988, and said that her experience with marijuana is proof that it works as a medicine. The four patients remaining in the program estimate they have received a total of 584 pounds from the federal government over the years. On the street, that would be worth more than $500,000. All of the marijuana comes from the University of Mississippi, where it is grown and harvested. The marijuana is then sent from Mississippi to a tightly controlled North Carolina lab, where they are rolled into cigarettes. Every month, steel tins with white labels are sent to Florida and Iowa. Packed inside each is a half-pound of marijuana rolled into 300 perfectly-wrapped joints. Irv Rosenfeld, a financial adviser in Fort Lauderdale, has been in the program since November 1982. His condition produces painful bone tumors, but he said marijuana has replaced prescription painkillers. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard R Smith Jr.