Elvy Musikka Talks The Evolution of Medical Cannabis

We sat down with one of the two surviving participants in the U.S. Government’s Compassionate Investigational New Drug Program on Marijuana to discuss their views on the cannabis sector.

Through the program launched in 1978, the National Institute on Drug Abuse provided a handful of patients with an outdoor pot grown by the University of Mississippi. It was a direct result of Robert C. Randall beating federal authorities on medical grounds in court after he was caught growing cannabis to treat his glaucoma.

Elvy Musikka joined the program a decade later. Like her predecessor Randall, she had started self-medication to treat her glaucoma. Over the years she has received just over 115,000 joints from the government. At the beginning of the year, Musikka announced that after 32 years she would no longer take part in the program. This begs the question, how bad does the weed have to be to turn down 300 free joints a month? Pretty bad. Before leaving the program, Musikka hadn’t used lower-middle-class cannabis in many years. Fortunately, in her home state of Oregon, she had access to a much higher quality.

Musikka started our chat by noting that she has seen the full development of Just Say No since she first became a medical marijuana patient in 1975.

“I’ve seen a lot of changes,” said Musikka LA Weekly. “But it’s still too slow. I can’t even imagine how there is still a serious ban in place and people going to jail for partaking in the Creator’s best gift to the planet. For me this is a blasphemy against the work of the Creator. That is with this ban. “

Musikka quickly realized how excited she is that patients in most states are getting access to medical cannabis. It wasn’t that easy for her. She worked with Randall in her defense, and when the officers saw who was helping her, they knew she was serious.

“When they knew my lawyer was serious, I was suddenly admitted. We have worked on it from the beginning – since I was arrested through my trial, “said Musikka. “Now the process was over and I won, so they had to give in.”

Musikka was initially surprised at the amount of cannabis she would receive. To her, “medication” meant lighting a joint and taking a few puffs, then relighting it and repeating the process a few times. Musikka asked her advisors about the crowd and they told her not to worry about it. She quickly understood where they came from.

“I was too happy to have the microphone,” said Musikka. “Because that’s all that can mean to me. It was my recipe. I could go all over the country with the Cannabis Action Network, and I did. “

As Musikka notes, one of the main reasons for leaving the program was the quality of the cannabis it actually had access to. We asked what she thought of the DEA’s recent move to finally expand the pool of legal marijuana for research beyond the farm that filled its cans for three decades.

“I’m so glad the federal government is allowing people who really know what they’re doing to grow marijuana because the excuse I’ve got over the past 30 years is that it wasn’t worth the effort.” She answered.

Musikka has never let up on the quality of the NIDA pot. She found this just one more reason to go out and champion medical cannabis.

“It was worth it because I could go and talk about what I believe in … all over the country. [It] was very important to me, ”said Musikka. “I never lied. I just told them everything I learned. They wanted me to find out the harmful sides of marijuana use and every time they asked me I would say, ‘Well, I’m still looking.’ Good luck with it.”

Do you see advocacy advocacy moving from “patient access” to something more business-oriented? Worst of all, everyone switched the strain of cannabis they were growing.

“Yeah, it shocked me at first and I didn’t do a lot of shows because I suddenly saw that I couldn’t buy the hemp clothes I like to wear, which was a big deal here in California and especially in the Northwest and now all over the country, ”said Musikka with a laugh.

She said she assumed that in recent years everyone has chosen to grow hemp for extracts rather than fiber. Fair guess.

Musikka concluded as always and urged people to reach out to their lawmakers, “To make sure they understand that your support for this issue is very important to the people of the planet. It’s not child’s play. “