BERKELEY -- The following is a statement on the nomination of Michael Leavitt as New Health and Human Services Secretary by Steph Sherer, executive director, Americans for Safe Access:

EMERYVILLE – James Blair, a spinal injury patient arrested on marijuana cultivation charges a year ago, marked the anniversary of the incident today by suing the City of Emeryville and the Emeryville Police Department. Assisted by the patient advocacy group, Americans for Safe Access (ASA), Blair is suing Emeryville Police Department (EPD) for damages resulting from his wrongful arrest and seizure as well as injunctive relief to force Emeryville to adopt sensible police policies with regard to medical marijuana.

In the most-watched case before the U.S. Supreme Court this term, two California women will argue Monday that the federal government does not have the right to punish them for using the medical marijuana their doctors recommend and their state says is legal. But activists are looking beyond the Court’s decision in Ashcroft vs. Raich, pushing formal petitions that would force federal agencies to recognize medical uses for marijuana and allow doctors to prescribe it.

Patients and doctors are converging today at 10:15am on the steps of Health and Human Services, demanding the government admit that marijuana has medical uses and stop blocking access.

When the government says there is no medical use for marijuana, it’s just plain wrong, according to a petition being filed Monday under the Data Quality Act, a little-known law that requires federal agencies to rely on sound science.

Federal agents descended on the foothill town of Roseville yesterday to raid one of the Sacramento area’s only licensed medical marijuana dispensaries. Local advocates are calling for noon protests Wednesday at the federal buildings in Sacramento and San Francisco.

How America’s Drug War has become an attack on our country’s most disadvantaged is the topic of two talks to be delivered by the Executive Director of Americans for Safe Access. Steph Sherer, a medical marijuana patient, noted activist, and expert on drug policy was invited to address two plenary sessions of the Boston Social Forum, a gathering of several hundred national progressives at the University of Massachusetts.

Tuesday at Noon, medical marijuana patients and local activists will be demonstrating in front of the California Highway Patrol headquarters in Oakland. They will be protesting a June 30th incident on Market Street that ended with four suspects being turned over to the federal Drug Enforcement Agency after CHP officers uncovered a marijuana-growing operation there.

At 2:00 pm today, medical marijuana protesters are gathering at a Sarasota Congressional office demanding an end to the federal government's refusal to respect state laws and the will of the people. They are denouncing Rep. Katherine Harris’ vote to continue federal arrests of medical marijuana patients.

Medical marijuana patients, their families and national advocates will be at the office of Rep. E. Clay Shaw, Jr. today at 10:00 am, protesting his vote to continue imprisoning sick and suffering Americans even in states that have laws protecting them.

At noon today medical marijuana protesters are gathering at a local Congressional office demanding an end to the federal government's refusal to respect state laws. Congress will be voting today or tomorrow on a bill to stop the federal arrest of patients in states that allow the medical use of marijuana.

The U.S. House of Representatives will be voting today or tomorrow on a bi-partisan bill to stop the federal arrest of patients in states that allow the medical use of marijuana.

The U.S. Supreme Court today announced it will take up a landmark California case that recently established a medical exception to the federal prohibition on marijuana. In December 2003, a federal appeals court in San Francisco ruled in the case of two California women and their caregivers that federal prosecutions of many medical marijuana patients and their caregivers are unconstitutional. That precedent has already affected many other medical marijuana cases.

A Chico man will be before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco this morning, arguing that his 2002 conviction for conspiring to grow medical marijuana was not only unconstitutional but based on misconduct by the U.S. Attorney’s office in Sacramento.

Since medical marijuana patient and caregiver Bryan Epis was sentenced in October 2002 to a mandatory minimum of ten years in prison, his case has become the prime example of how far – and how wrong – the federal government can go in prosecuting its war on drugs.

A South Central grandmother who served in Vietnam is in court Wednesday, suing the Los Angeles Police Department for harassment after they destroyed her supply of medical marijuana four years in a row.

On the anniversary of a landmark federal sentencing, medical marijuana patients and activists across the country are rallying at the offices of members of Congress Friday, demanding an end to federal prosecutions.

The medical cannabis patients who won a landmark case against John Ashcroft last December today got the legal protection they sought.