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.