By Susan Candiotti and Ross Levitt, CNN
Attorney Norman Kent shipped the marijuana as a next-day delivery — to the wrong zip code.
Elvy Musikka, 71, of Eugene, Oregon, says the post office lost something that could cost her more than just a buzz. She could lose her eyesight.
Six metal tins packed with medical marijuana joints –1,800 in all — are in transit somewhere with her name on it. That’s enough for up to 10 potent smokes a day for six months.
It’s a prescription she receives twice a year to treat her glaucoma.
“I just don’t know what to do,” Musikka said.
Musikka says she’s one of four remaining patients getting pot for free as part of a federal government program called Compassionate Use Protocol, developed in the 1980s.
Her attorney says the cannabis is grown in a government lab at the University of Mississippi.
“It relaxes the eye so whatever excess fluid can get through, ” Mussika said.
She usually flies back to Miami, her former home, to pick up the pot from her eye specialist at the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute. But this time, the medicine was delayed, and she had to fly home without it.
Her attorney, Norman Kent of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, accepted the pot for her and shipped it as next-day delivery through the U.S. Postal Service on March 17.
It never arrived at Musikka’s Oregon home.
“I spent $120 for (shipping) three cartons, ” Kent said.
On Monday, Kent started calling the postal service.
He discovered he mislabeled the ZIP code. It was off by one digit and the shipment was sent to the post office in Santa Monica, California, about 850 miles away from Eugene, Oregon.
“I called consumer affairs’ lost and found, the complaint and tracking departments, and everyone says that they’re looking,” Kent said.
Now, more than a week after the packages were mailed, there has yet to be a whiff of the missing cartons.
Read complete article here:
http://articles.cnn.com/2011-03-25/us/fea.medical.marijuana_1_elvy-musikka-postal-service-cartons?_s=PM%3AUS