Eugene’s Elvy Musikka is one of only four recipients of federal medical marijuna for glaucoma

Originally Posted on Emerald Media via UWIRE

The first thing you notice about Elvy Musikka are her eyes. Behind a pair of leopard-print glasses, they are as thin as crescent moons. They’re dark and slanted, like she’s permanently squinting, which is a result of her glaucoma, borne from congenital cataracts.

One afternoon, she sits on her couch and draws a long breath from her purple glass bong. That’s likely the second thing you notice: the wall-to-wall scent of weed around her. Musikka, 74, smokes a lot. What separates her from other pot users, even other medical marijuana recipients, is that her supplier is the federal government.

Even as cities all around Oregon are imposing one-year bans on medical marijuana dispensaries – 71 cities in Oregon as of April 15 – Musikka is largely unaffected. While she does claim an Oregon Medical Marijuana card, she can still fly once a year to Florida and pick-up tins of government-sanctioned weed. The weed is harvested at the University of Mississippi and is rolled into 300 weed cigarettes, socketed into a tin and sent to Florida. Each tin contains a half-pound and Musikka brought six back during her last trip.

“Sometimes they send us trash,” Musikka said, referring to a previous batch as essentially hemp. “The other (patients) don’t complain about it, they don’t talk to the press and the reason they don’t is very simple: We’re all scared to death to lose the damn thing.”

Musikka is one of four living patients still supplied through the Compassionate Investigational New Drug program, enacted by the FDA in 1976 after a federal judge ruled that Robert Randall — also with glaucoma — required marijuana to alleviate his symptoms. The trial put Randall at the forefront of the fledgling movement to legalize weed as medicine.

A native Colombian, Musikka has endured cataracts since birth. She lived with stinging eyes for years as a young woman while shuttling around the East Coast with her mother and stepfather. Several surgeries and painful prescription drugs couldn’t abate the pain until one doctor finally suggested weed, more than a decade before California became the first state to permit medical marijuana in 1996.

Marijuana is the only thing that quells the pain behind her eyes – prescription drugs, she says, never helped.

“First time I tried marijuana, I stuffed it in an apple and cooked it. And nothing happened to me. I said ‘well that figures. When I drink with my friends, they get drunk and I don’t,’” Musikka said. “The next morning I woke up and the room was spinning and I had to go to work. I learned the meaning of ‘paranoia’ that morning real quick. That day lasted forever.”

She’s a funny woman. Crow’s feet and deep laugh lines etched around her mouth make it seem like she’s always smiling. Resurfacing from the mouthpiece, her glasses are skewed and yarns of light brown hair flop around her face. A tendril of smoke climbs from her mouth and her eyes seem to grin on their own.

“For about four decades I could only see about light and movement with this eye,” Musikka said, pointing to her right eye.

Musikka’s good humor belies a decades long frustration with the status quo. The pain in her eyes lit a fire, with logs thrown on by years of searching for relief and being denied again and again. She was arrested while living Florida in 1987 for possession. Regional press took notice of the unusual case – she never denied the pot was hers and argued it was the only remedy for her eye.

“This government has got to understand that there’s absolutely no way you can eliminate the instincts of self-preservation,” Musikka said. “If I know I’m going to go blind if I don’t take marijuana or go to jail then I’m going to take the stupid jail because maybe I’ll still have a chance to fight for my sight.”

Randall himself testified on her behalf. Her doctor defended her claim, and she was eventually acquitted that same year. By 1988, she joined the Compassionate Investigational New Drug program, just four years before President George Bush Sr. terminated it during a nationwide crackdown on drugs.

Since then Musikka has been on the guest speaking circuit as a marijuana advocate. She’s received awards from both NORML and the Reform Center, two major leaders in reforming drug policy. She moved to Eugene to be closer to her grown son. Now she spends her time keeping her apartment tidy, playing with her 5-year-old granddaughter and taking occasional trips around Oregon to support pro-medical marijuana.

However, advocacy remains an important part of her life. Her position as one of the last federal medical marijuana recipients gives her a soapbox she’s not afraid to stand on. This fall she plans to return to Florida to support a medical marijuana initiative.

“If they tell us they will only catch a few of us, but if they have jailed 25 million – I mean 25 million,” Musika said, adjusting her pitch for effect, and smiling behind her glasses. “How many are we really?”

Read more here: http://dailyemerald.com/2014/04/16/eugenes-elvy-musikka-is-one-of-only-four-recipients-of-federal-medical-marijuna-for-glaucoma/
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