Medical Marijuana From Sea to Shining Sea? A Lawsuit Wants to Force Feds to Say Yes to Pot

Marijuana advocates filed a suit in a U.S. Circuit Court today to force the Obama administration to answer a petition that seeks to have the federal government recognize cannabis as a drug with acceptable medical uses.

The suit wants the court to order the administration to answer the original request within 60 days. This after nine years of stalling on the matter, according to California NORML, which is party to Monday's suit.

If the coalition of pro-pot organizations is successful, marijuana would be taken out of the federal Schedule I category -- the group of outlaw drugs with no legitimate uses, to which cocaine doesn't even belong -- and, presumably, made available as a medicine from coast-to-cost. Wishful thinking?

According to a statement, the Coalition for Rescheduling Cannabis says the administration (first Bush's, now Obama's) never responded to its 2002 petition to reschedule marijuana, "despite a formal recommendation in 2006 from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the final arbiter in the rescheduling process."

The case has been going on so long that one of the patients named as a plaintiff has died, according to the coalition.

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