Marijuana users and growers usually try to stay out of federal courts, which strictly enforce the nationwide laws against the drug and have rebuffed challenges to the government’s classification of pot as one of the most dangerous narcotics.
But that could change this week when a federal judge in Sacramento, in a criminal case against seven men charged with growing marijuana on national forest land in Trinity and Tehama counties, hears what she has described as “new scientific and medical information” that raises questions about the validity of the federal ban.
