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.