GROUP CHALLENGES FEDERAL GOVERNMENT'S EFFORT TO GET RECORDS OF
MICHIGAN MEDICAL MARIJUANA USERS

GRAND RAPIDS - Americans for Safe Access, a national
medical-marijuana advocacy group, today filed briefs in the case
where the federal government is seeking state-held records of seven
medical-marijuana users.

This is the third group asking to be heard in the case after state
Attorney General Bill Schuette, an opponent of medical marijuana,
said the state would release the information upon a judge's order.
The state Department of Community Health, which administers the
program, last summer resisted a subpoena by the U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration.

The DEA requested the information as part of a drug investigation in
the Lansing area, records showed.

The state has been reluctant to release the records fearing it would
violate privacy protections in the medical-marijuana law.

A hearing is Tuesday in U.S. District Court. Originally, a judge was
to act on a request by federal prosecutors to enforce the subpoena
earlier this month.

Americans for Safe Access considers itself the "nation's largest
member-based organization of patients, medical professionals,
scientists and concerned citizens working to promote safe and legal
access to marijuana for therapeutic use and research."

This case is being watched across the country.

Grand Rapids attorney Bruce Block, who has focused on marijuana
cases, wrote on behalf of the organization: "If the federal
government succeeds, medical marijuana patients in Michigan and
throughout the rest of the United States will be deterred from
becoming legal medical-marijuana patients in the states in which they reside.

"This will be deleterious to the health of thousands, yet the
Michigan Department of Community Health has not addressed these
issues, has not argued the merits of whether or not these documents
must be produced, but rather has acquiesced to the demand so long as
this court will somehow cloak it with immunity when it violates the law."

He said that the DEA is seeking "documents of the most intimate
nature - medical records of sick and dying patients."

Under the law, the state holds a confidential list of of qualifying
patients and caregivers, who can grow marijuana. The Department of
Community Health can only tell law enforcement if a registration card is valid.

While marijuana remains illegal under federal law, prosecutors say
they are not targeting legal users of the drug.

Assistant U.S. Attorney John Bruha said that " Department of Justice
policy discourages expenditure of investigative or prosecutorial
resources on individuals or caregivers 'whose actions are in clear
and unambiguous compliance with existing state laws providing for the
medical use of marijuana.'"

Block said that if information is released from the registry, it
"would open a Pandora's Box," and become "an easy source of
information the federal government could access by subpoena of an
agent whenever it desired."

Such access would essentially "nullify" the program, Block wrote.