MEDICAL POT COOPERATIVES SUE FEDS OVER CRACKDOWN

Pot suppliers went to federal court Monday to try to halt the Obama
administration's campaign to close down their dispensaries, saying
the survival of California's medical marijuana law is at stake.

In lawsuits filed in each of the state's four federal districts,
medical marijuana cooperatives, joined by patients and property
owners, accused the Justice Department of violating an agreement to
leave them alone if they complied with state law.

The department had pledged to the courts, and to patients and their
suppliers, that "those who possess, grow and distribute medical
marijuana in compliance with state law will not be prosecuted nor
their property seized," the dispensaries' lawyers said.

They argued that the federal government had made a binding commitment
to follow that policy in a settlement last year of a suit by a
marijuana collective in Santa Cruz. The government is now breaching
that settlement, and breaking the law, with its strategy of going
after marijuana dispensaries by threatening to prosecute their
landlords, the plaintiffs' lawyers said.

They are seeking injunctions prohibiting federal prosecutors from
filing charges or seizing their property.

The Justice Department declined to comment on the suits. But
department officials have emphatically denied that their new policy,
announced Oct. 7 at a news conference by the four federal prosecutors
in California, broke any legal commitments to the courts or promises
to the public.

Following up on President Obama's campaign pledge to let states set
their own medical marijuana policies, the department told federal
prosecutors in October 2009 - in a memo quoted in the new lawsuits -
that prosecution of seriously ill patients and their caregivers who
comply with state law "is unlikely to be an efficient use of limited
federal resources."

Medical marijuana advocates interpreted that statement broadly to
apply to pot dispensaries that operated with state and local
government approval.

But recently, Justice Department officials have said they never meant
to immunize suppliers of drugs that are banned by federal law.

At last month's news conference, the prosecutors said they had sent
letters to owners of dozens of buildings warning them that they faced
property forfeiture, and possible felony charges, unless they evicted
the pot dispensaries within 45 days.

In Monday's lawsuits, lawyers for the marijuana suppliers said the
threats have already forced numerous dispensaries to close. By
cutting off patients' primary source of the drug, the lawyers said,
this "comprehensive attack ... will eviscerate and likely eradicate
California's medical marijuana program."

This is the second legal challenge to the Justice Department's
campaign. A suit filed in San Francisco on Oct. 27 by the advocacy
group Americans for Safe Access accused the department of mounting an
unconstitutional attack on the state's authority to set its own health policy.