[Steph Sherer]'s stake is personal and professional. She uses cannabis daily for a spinal injury suffered during her arrest at a Washington protest five years ago. Sherer also runs Oakland-based Americans for Safe Access, a nonprofit bent on making marijuana available to any patient in need.

Medical marijuana activists like Sherer consider [Jim Tozzi]'s handiwork a potential boon for a movement thwarted by cops and the courts, most recently a U.S. Supreme Court decision that declined to protect cannabis patients from federal prosecution.

Growing up in Austin, Texas, Sherer always preferred microbrew beer to marijuana. But that relationship with cannabis changed in 2000, she said, after a U.S. marshal hit her from behind during an International Monetary Fund protest. Scherer's civil lawsuit against the U.S. is winding toward trial.