Medical marijuana growers to sue DEA

Robert Anton Wilson receives marijuana at city hall last week in Santa Cruz, California.

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SANTA CRUZ, California (CNN) -- A California cooperative which legally grows marijuana for medical patients plans to sue the federal government for the return of 130 marijuana plants seized by federal agents earlier this month, the founders of the group said Monday.

Mike and Valerie Corral, the founders of the WO/MAN Alliance for Medical Marijuana (WAMM), said Drug Enforcement Administration officials cut and seized the plants from the "community garden" on their land September 5.

The Corrals, who started the cooperative after Valerie began suffering from epileptic seizures as a result of a car accident, were taken into custody but later released without being charged.

The group will file a motion on Tuesday seeking a court order requiring the DEA to return all the Corrals' personal property seized during the raid, including their marijuana plants, said their attorney Ben Rice.

"If law enforcement confiscates private citizens' property, they can go to court and demand their stuff back," Rice said. "And we'd like an order from this court directing them to give it back. What's unusual about this is that I've heard the medical marijuana has already been destroyed."

Medical marijuana is illegal under federal law, under which the DEA operates.

Local police had been consulted when the cooperative was created to assure the group the operation was legal, but the federal raid took place without local authorities' knowledge.

California Attorney General Bill Lockyer has spoken out against the DEA raid.

Marijuana "represents little danger to the public," Lockyer wrote to the agency in a letter dated September 6, "and is certainly not a concern which would warrant diverting scarce federal resources away from the fight against domestic methamphetamine production, heroin distribution or international terrorism, to cite just a few far more worthy priorities."

Rice said that filing the motion is just the first step; he indicated that WAMM and the Corrals would also be filing a lawsuit "in a couple of weeks."

Santa Cruz's mayor and other city politicians, held a pro-medical marijuana rally at city hall last week where patients, including the Corrals, received medical marijuana in a public forum.

The symbolic protest was aimed at highlighting what supporters say is the Bush administration's crackdown on legal marijuana cooperatives and on patients who smoke the herb to combat symptoms of various illnesses, including cancer and AIDS.

Hours before that rally, the director of national drug control policy and the U.S. surgeon general kicked off a new media campaign in Washington aimed at curbing marijuana use, especially by teenagers.

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