California law was violated by dispensers that use medical marijuana for-profit. This has been discovered after guidelines of the hospitals were checked by the police, who now want to join a federal crackdown against the dispensers. Jerry Brown, the State Attorney General, said on Monday that the formal cooperatives which are registered on Food and Agricultural Code are legal under the law.

Still, any dispensary which is for-profit and it is not operating as a registered cooperative might be arrested by the local authorities. There are 300 dispensaries which appear in business guises but there is little known about how many of them work for-profit.

The federal law considers that the use of marijuana is illegal in all circumstances and all patients who receive a recommendation from their doctor to use this drug have to have cards that every county is asked to issue.

The guidelines wanted to make clearer the law that California has on marijuana. Still, this has led to unclear responses from the local law enforcements and caused a federal crackdown on the dispensaries.

Joseph Russoniello, Northern California's chief federal prosecutor, said that authorities don’t search for the doctors or the caregivers, but for the ones who bring marijuana inside a county.

 Joe Elford, the top lawyer for the marijuana advocacy group Americans for Safe Access, said that "We think the vast majority of dispensaries in California will be in compliance." The State Attorney General added that each legal dispensary can grow up to six mature plants for every qualified patient.