JUDGE WON'T HALT FEDERAL MEDICAL POT CRACKDOWN

A judge has rejected a request from medical marijuana suppliers to bar
federal prosecutors from filing charges against them or seizing their
property.

U.S. District Judge Saundra Brown Armstrong in Oakland said the
medical marijuana collectives had failed to show they would suffer
"immediate, irreparable harm" without a court order.

"The court is sensitive to the desires of individuals to use medical
marijuana with a doctor's recommendation, as permitted by California
law," Armstrong wrote in a 27-page ruling filed this week.
"Nonetheless, marijuana remains illegal under federal law, and in
Congress' view, it has no medicinal value."

In rejecting the advocates' request for temporary injunctions, the
judge also said she doubted they would prevail in lawsuits seeking to
halt the Obama administration's campaign to shut down their
dispensaries.

Marijuana suppliers, patients and property owners filed lawsuits in
each of the state's four federal districts last month, accusing the
Justice Department of violating an agreement to leave them alone if
they complied with California law.

The department had said "those who possess, grow and distribute
medical marijuana in compliance with state law will not be prosecuted
nor their property seized," the plaintiffs' lawyers said.

They argued that the federal government had made a binding commitment
to follow that policy in settling a suit last year by a marijuana
collective in Santa Cruz. The government is 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.

The Justice Department announced its new policy at an October news
conference with the four federal prosecutors in California. It has
denied it broke any legal commitments to the courts or promises to the
public.