Elvy's Story
AJ Robinson

When I was a kid, some of my older brothers smoked and I don’t mean tobacco. At the time, I didn’t know what they were smoking. I just knew they had weird-shaped pipes.

How could a water pipe work?

The water pipe was the strangest of them all. I always wondered. How could a pipe full of water work? I also did not have a clue as to what they were really smoking.

That was the 1960s; everyone smoked. My mom had her cigarettes, dad had his pipe and cigars and I had breathing problems: childhood asthma.

My physician couldn’t figure out why I was so sick. Did I mention that he smoked too? Yeah, back then, just about everyone smoked, even me, in a manner of speaking.

The second-hand smoke was toxic. Yet, I never wanted to smoke. The one time I tried a cigarette, as does every little kid, I gagged. Cigars tasted horrible, so a no-go there.

Then there was marijuana. In the 1960s and 1970s, it was no big deal, yet I wasn’t interested in it. I think after trying tobacco, I was kind of put off by the smoking experience.

Then came the 1980s and the War on Drugs; Nancy Reagan’s “Just Say No to Drugs” Campaign and so forth. Oh, then I became a true believer. Drugs were bad!

Marijuana was bad; it was a gateway drug. If I lit up just once, I was heading down a path of total destruction that had but one conclusion. I’d die in a dirty alley of a crack or heroin overdose.

Yeah, marijuana was a bad drug.

A few months ago, I meant Elvy Musikka

Then, just a few months ago, I met a very nice woman. Her name is Elvy Musikka; she uses marijuana, every day. Not only does she use it every day, she has a legal right to do use it every day.

Not only that, the U.S. Federal Government is her supplier! Sounds impossible, right, but it’s true. Back in the 1970s, the government began a programme to study the possible positive uses of marijuana.

In 1988, Elvy was a struggling single mom in Hollywood, Florida. All her life, she had dealt with eye problems. Born was cataracts and afflicted with glaucoma, she’d been almost legally blind her whole life. Finally, one compassionate physician helped her to see the benefits of medical marijuana.

As long as Elvy smoked marijuana or ate it in foods, her eye pressure, the critical factor in glaucoma, remained normal. Well, in 1988, the authorities arrested Elvy for having marijuana plants in her backyard. At her trial, her lawyer successfully argued that she had a medical need for marijuana; she was not guilty.

After that, she was able to get onto the government program. Ever since, she receives three hundred, yes, 300 marijuana cigarettes, every month from the government. She has paperwork from the government giving her permission to possess medical marijuana, but she an endless series of airport stoppings, arrests or harassment by state and local authorities.

Elvy’s journey did not stop with medical marijuana. It could have. She could have rested on her laurels, as the saying goes, and continued to receive her medical marijuana; that’s not Elvy’s style.

Bush 41 terminated the medical marijuana programme that worked so well.

No, because the programme she’s on was terminated under the Bush, George H W, Administration. No longer could women and men have get access to the federal programme and that kind of rubbed Elvy the wrong way.

Elvy is not the sort of person to sit by while others suffer. No, she became an advocate for the sick, the cancer patients, the HIV suffers, the children afflicted with horrible seizures that tear up their bodies and “fry” their brains. All of these people, all of them, benefit from medical marijuana.

Not only does medical marijuana give them relief and comfort, but it does so without all the toxic and harmful sick effects of modern pharmaceuticals. Thus, Elvy became and remains, to this day, an advocate for the legalization of medical marijuana; she criss-crosses the country speaking at rallies, testifying at trials and hearings, and she speaks out for those who lack the voice or strength to speak for themselves.

Elvy has simple goals. Get people the simple natural medicine they need so they can live happy, healthy normal lives. Educate the public as to the true nature of medical marijuana.

She is not alone in her quest. Not only does she have many friends, some in high places, some who are high profile, but also she has a small independent film production company behind her. On 20 April 2015, which is 4-20, a date that has a deep significance to people in the medical marijuana movement, the company launched an indie-gogo fund-raiser. The goal is to raise enough money to tell Elvy’s story in a motion picture.

Alcohol is man-made. Marijuana was made by God.

When it comes to medical marijuana, Elvy’s daughter summed up the problem, very well, a few years ago “Mom, alcohol was made by men; marijuana was made by God. Which one do you think we should be okay with?”

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For those readers that wish "The Elvy Project" to succeed, I discovered that, if you send information regarding the project from IGG site, it raises the project ranking, in IGG, which helps us get noticed. Please go to igg.me/at/The ElvyProject. On the left side of the main page are links to Twitter, Facebook and so forth. You can go directly to your address book and decide whom to send the main page link. If we all do this, our ranking on IGG will increase as will our donations.