The New Republic:  “When you get a new car, you start noticing the same model all over the highway. It’s the same way when you figure out what California’s marijuana dispensaries look like—green crosses and signage about “medicine” and “420” start popping up all over the City of Angels: On your commute to work, in your neighborhood, around the corner from your favorite restaurant. To put it bluntly, it’s not hard to find weed in California. But that all might be about to change. The state’s four U.S. Attorneys are gamely trying to alter the broadly popular status quo with arrests and threats of prosecution and property seizure for landlords who rent to dispensaries, a campaign announced in a rare joint press conference in October. Medical marijuana advocates call it an “intense crackdown” and have launched a lawsuit claiming the federal attorneys’ tactics violate California’s tenth amendment rights.”

ABC News:  “In its effort to shut down California’s booming medical marijuana dispensaries, the Justice Department is seeking to seize the property where the clinics are based, even going after at least one bank that holds the mortgage on a clinic.  Chase bank received a letter to evict the Marin Alliance for Medical Marijuana, according to Greg Anton, attorney for the clinic. The bank owns the note on the building in Fairfax, Calif.  According to Anton, the bank received a similar letter from U.S. attorney Melinda Haag for the northern district of California that was sent to the Alliance’s landlord on Sept. 28 and other medical marijuana dispensaries. The letters threatened that unless the owners evicted the cannabis clinics within 45 days, they could face criminal action.”

AJC: “A letter from federal prosecutors accomplished what nearly $600,000 in legal fees couldn’t do in this Orange County suburb: it shut down medical marijuana shops.  Two weeks after California’s four U.S. attorneys announced they were cracking down on dozens of operations across the state growing and selling medical pot illegally, all eight collectives that occupied the second floor of a Lake Forest mini-mall have closed. Across the Central District of California, which stretches from Santa Barbara to San Bernardino counties, many of the 38 clinics have closed because landlords, threatened with criminal charges or seizure of their assets, were given just 14 days to evict their clients”

Phoenix New Times:  “President Obama doesn’t just want to seize the property of California medical-marijuana dispensaries and hit them with huge tax bills.  Now the Obama Administration plans to prosecute people who place ads for dispensaries — and possibly the newspapers that print them.”

See “US attorney eyes going after media running pot ads.   The chief federal prosecutor in San Diego [Laura Duffy] is contemplating expanding a federal crackdown on the medical marijuana industry by going after newspapers, radio stationsand other outlets that run advertisements for California’s pot dispensaries, her office told The Associated Press on Thursday. . . . ‘I’m not just seeing print advertising,’ Duffy told California Watch. ‘I’m actually hearing radio and seeing TV advertising. It’s gone mainstream. Not only is it inappropriate – one has to wonder what kind of message we’re sending to our children – it’s against the law’.”

See also “Medical marijuana crackdown gets reaction from those in industry.”

NBC LA:  “Once again, the Barack Obama administration has taken a stance on medical marijuana. Federal prosecutors have written medical marijuana dispensaries throughout California that they will prosecute them for violating federal drug laws that prevent cultivation, possession and sales of marijuana unless they shut down their facilities.”