The following is a summary of an interview between Sue Supriano and Elvy Musikka. You can listen to the terrific interview in its entirety here at Steppin’ Out of Babylon, a radio interview program minus the filters of corporate greed. This posting is in honor of the fact that I recently saw Elvy Musikka at an activism event and I remembered how totally awesome she is…
With a bucket of marijuana cigarettes…(photo by Don Ryan for the Seattle Times–Associated Press)
Elvy Musikka is one of four people who have a federally granted permit for to use medical marijuana. As a child Musikka suffered from congenital cataracts, which developed into glaucoma after several surgeries. She began using marijuana to treat this condition despite the opinion of her ophthalmologist, who felt that she should have surgery instead. Musikka chose to have the surgery on one eye, while continuing to treat the glaucoma using marijuana, obtained illegally to treat her other eye. She was in constant fear of getting arrested and loosing her children, but the marijuana was working.
By 1987 the eye she was having surgery on was blind and Musikka was arrested for possession of marijuana. By this point her children had left home for college. The press was alerted to the story and followed every move from her arrest to her trial. At the trial, Dr. Palmberg, Musikka’s doctor, convinced the judge that no marijuana for Musikka would be a “life sentence to blindness.”
On August 15, 1988 Musikka was acquitted. Later that same year she was enrolled in an experimental program run by the Federal Government that allows her to fly to Florida annually and pick up a year’s worth of marijuana. She also completes a progress report every year that is never published, because, according to Musikka, the government is driven by the demands of the pharmaceutical, tobacco, alcohol and prison industries which all gain by the “hideous prohibition” of medical marijuana.
Since her acquittal, Musikka has become an activist to help others who are in the same position she was. In September 1988 Francis L Young of the DEA stated that “marijuana in natural form is a benign therapeutic substance.” He also stated that for a government to come between patient and health benefits of medical marijuana is “capricious, unreasonable and arbitrary”—Musikka adds that it is also unconstitutional and immoral. Musikka travels the country speaking with legislators to push for changes in the law regarding medical marijuana. She also speaks at educational functions in order to raise consciousness about this issue.
There are 20 million people in jail for drug possession. There are one million drug related arrests per year. The environment suffers. Elvy Mussika says (citing the source medicalcannibus.com) that our government is “arresting and robbing own citizens.” She also says that it is our own “personal responsibility to end this hideous prohibition.” If we don’t, the consequence will be on us.
May the true spirit of love be your guiding light.-Elvy Musikka
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