== Forwarded Message Follows =========================================
 * Original Date: 01-08-97  19:50
 * Original Area: NetMail
From: "Carl E. Olsen" 
Subject: Elvy Musikka
Statement and Question for Barry McCaffrey
Tuesday, January 7, 1997, 6:00 p.m.
   My name is Elvy Musikka.  I'm patient number three of eight who
currently receive medical marijuana from the federal government of the
United States.  My illness is glaucoma and I've been receiving marijuana
since 1988.
   By 1991, I am aware of at least fifty patients who were approved by the
FDA (Food and Drug Administration), the DEA (Drug Enforcement
Administration) and the NIDA (National Institute on Drug Abuse), after
their doctor's recommendation, documentation and extensive medical records.
 Thirty-six of them never did receive the medical marijuana for which they
were approved.  But all of us were able to prove to the FDA, the DEA and
the NIDA that, for us, marijuana isn't just a medicine, it is the most
effective, efficient and reliable part of our treatment, and the safest one
as well.
   I represent 49 million disabled Americans, most of whose illnesses can
be greatly alleviated with medical marijuana.
   In view of the mandates that the voters of California and Arizona have
sent to the federal government to stop its war on us, will you now find the
compassion necessary to eliminate the suffering for all of those people who
are seriously ill, their friends, relatives and physicians, who constitute
a large segment of the almost 600,000 people we arrested last year with
this blasphemy on the creator's work that we know as hemp, cannabis,
marijuana prohibition?
   That is my question to the General, my statement and my question.  So if
you can make some use of that and include that, I think it's really
important that the general population hear that there are eight of us
legally smoking with doctor's prescriptions in this country, and that by
1991 at least fifty of us were approved, even though thirty-six of those
people never saw medical marijuana.  And the tragedy of it is that they are
now on very hard addictive drugs that are robbing them of their normal life
and access to their own mind.
-- END u-
Elvy Musikka
Post Office Box 6067, Fort Lauderdale, Florida 33081, 954-966-4238
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*  Carl E. Olsen                *  carl@commonlink.net                *
*  Post Office Box 4091         *  NORML News archived at:            *
*  Des Moines, Iowa 50333       *  http://www.calyx.com/~olsen/       *
*  (515) 262-6957 voice & fax   *  http://www.commonlink.com/~olsen/  *
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