The U.S. Department of Justice is going after a 34-year-old entrepreneur with no prior criminal record for operating medical marijuana dispensaries in Sacramento, California, where medicinal pot was legalized two decades ago.

Critics of the Obama administration say the case against Matthew Davies is yet another example of the federal government wrongly going after medical marijuana operations that have abided by state law.

Davies started his business, Medizen, three years ago and quickly made it into an $8 million enterprise. He says he carefully followed all state laws in setting up his dispensary. But Benjamin Wagner, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of California, claims Davies has trafficked a controlled substances outlawed by federal statute.

Wagner has offered Davies a plea deal that would send him to prison for five years. If the dispensary owner goes to trial and loses his case, he could wind up serving 15 years.

“To be looking at 15 years of our life, you couldn’t pay me enough to give that up,” Davies told The New York Times. “If I had believed for a minute this would happen, I would never have gotten into this.”

-Noel Brinkerhoff

To Learn More:

In California, It’s U.S. vs. State Over Marijuana (by Adam Nagourney, New York Times)

Matthew Davies' Wife Asks Obama To End Family's 'Nightmare,' Drop Medical Marijuana Case (by Ryan Reilly, Huffington Post)

Three Stockton Men Indicted On Large Warehouse Marijuana Growing Operation (U.S. Attorney’s Office, Eastern California)