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BY MILA MIMICA


A marijuana-advocacy group filed a lawsuit against top Department of Justice Officials on Thursday. Sacramento’s KOVR has the details.

“The group called Americans for Safe Access filed this suit. They say the feds overstepped their authority by not respecting how local governments are implementing state medical marijuana laws.”

NBC explains the suit is a response to recent crackdowns on medical marijuana businesses around California. Earlier this month, the Department of Justice gave the dispensaries an ultimatum.

“The feds say it has gotten out of control and that it’s against federal law and they’ve put dispensaries on notice to shut down voluntarily or have it done for them.”

Joe Elford, a lawyer for the group, told Fox Business News the federal government doesn’t have the resources to conduct what he calls a ‘war on medical marijuana.’ So instead, they’re trying to get the state to do it for them.

“What it is doing is they’re attempting to constrict the state of California to have to change its own marijuana laws, its own medical marijuana laws, in an effort to constrict the state to conduct the federal war against medical marijuana and that crosses the constitutional line.”

But a blogger for Think Progress says the evidence for that claim is murky. The D.O.J. is targeting individual dispensaries, which could undercut the suit’s justification.

“... the lawsuit appears to claim that the federal government is violating something known as the ‘anti-commandeering doctrine,’ which forbids the federal government from requiring a state government to take a particular action. … The problem with this lawsuit is that there is no indication whatsoever that D.O.J. is ordering California to do anything.”

As a candidate, President Obama campaigned that he would have a hands-off approach to medical marijuana businesses adhering to state law. According to LA Weekly, the government has been careful not to implicate the president with the D.O.J.’s recent crackdown.

“On the eve of a presidential election year, the U.S. Department of Justice has gone out of its way to say that President Obama himself had nothing to do with the crackdowns, which so far have spared pot shops in the city of L.A., the nation's dispensary capital.”