In a post on Drug War Chronicle, criminal justice journalist Clarence Walker reports that the DEA and FBI are together putting pressure on banks in northern California to report any suspicious activity pertaining to the sale of marijuana. Rather than get involved in messy federal investigations, many banks have opted to simply close the accounts of medical marijuana dispensaries. The news comes at the same time as other recent stories, as reported by The Colorado Independent and The American Independent, have implicated federal efforts to cut the legs off of medical marijuana dispensaries that operate within state laws but are in murky legal territory according to federal drug statutes. In a post on Drug War Chronicle, criminal justice journalist Clarence Walker reports that the DEA and FBI are together putting pressure on banks in northern California to report any suspicious activity pertaining to the sale of marijuana. Rather than get involved in messy federal investigations, many banks have opted to simply close the accounts of medical marijuana dispensaries. The news comes at the same time as other recent stories, as reported by The Colorado Independent and The American Independent, have implicated federal efforts to cut the legs off of medical marijuana dispensaries that operate within state laws but are in murky legal territory according to federal drug statutes.

As The American Independent has reported, perhaps the most effective of these tactics is a push within the IRS to audit the books of medical marijuana dispensaries and declare all business deductions ineligible. If the move continues and isn’t overruled in court, it could mean that all but the largest dispensaries in the country could shut down within months.

Allen St. Pierre, Executive Director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), tells The American Independent that he believes this is phase three in a federal push to stymie medical marijuana that began in 1996, when medical marijuana first became legal in California. St. Pierre says that federal investigators first went after doctors, threatening to convict any who discussed medical uses of marijuana with patients as accomplices in the procurement and possession of marijuana. That tactic was declared unconstitutional in the case Conant v. McCaffrey.

The next tactic was to prosecute landlords. “If you’re renting property to someone breaking federal law, the property can be taken,” says St. Pierre. “Unsurprisingly, a lot of landlords stopped renting to dispensaries.” Eventually, enough landlords found liability loopholes or simply decided it was worth the risk to rent to dispensaries that the government gave up, as the thousands of dispensaries that today populate California alone attest.

Now, the federal government is using a time-honored method that could just cripple the medical marijuana industry once and for all, St. Pierre says.