NATIONWIDE DIRECT ACTION TO PUSH BACK DEA

California Activists Risk Arrest For Safe Access to Medical Marijuana

L.A. County, CA – In a new move to ratchet up the fight for state Medical Marijuana laws, Los Angeles County activists will attempt to disrupt business-as-usual at a local outpost of the Federal Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). The “direct action” will coincide with similar events in 50 cities nationwide. Under the banner of “Americans for Safe Access”, the groups demand that the DEA cease and desist with its plans to raid dispensaries now operating within the law in Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington.

WHO: Americans for Safe Access, Los Angeles County Chapter

WHAT: Protest against the DEA’s intrusion upon patients’ rights to medical marijuana

WHEN: Thursday, June 6th at noon

WHERE: 255 E. Temple Street, Los Angeles

Now legal in Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Nevada, Oregon and Washington, dispensaries are the only safe source for seriously ill patients to access medical marijuana. “These raids are criminal,” says Steph Sherer, Executive Director with Americans for Safe Access “nine states and 73 percent of the American public believe that medical marijuana should be safe and legal, yet the DEA is now working harder than ever to turn these patients into criminals.”

Now, with new pressure from the Bush Administration to connect the “war on terror” to the “war on drugs” under the rubric of “narcoterrorism” the Agency is aggressively targeting state laws that permit medical marijuana. This new push to crackdown on “renegade states” will receive a final green light on June 7th when lawyers expect the United States District Court for Northern California to finalize a decision ruling that Federal drug prohibitions supercede state laws.