LOS ANGELES—Federal agents raided 10 marijuana clinics July 25, the same day city leaders introduced a measure calling for an end to the crackdown on the dispensaries allowed under state law.

The bust netted five arrests, large quantities of marijuana and cash, and was the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s second largest since California voters approved medical marijuana sales in 1996. The drug remains illegal under federal law.

DEA spokeswoman Sarah Pullen refused to give details of the raids, but said the timing of the bust and the city’s action was “purely coincidental.”

Councilman Dennis Zine, who earlier in the day wrote a letter to DEA Administrator Karen Tandy asking the agency to stop the raids, called the federal agents “bullies.”

“Instead of using resources to go after drug dealers ruining neighborhoods and poisoning school kids, they’re going after individuals dying of cancer and suffering from AIDS who need cannabis to have any type of appetite,” Zine said.

He said he and the council support a congressional bill that would prohibit new clinics from opening until the city finds a way to better regulate its more than 100 dispensaries. It also calls for withholding funding for DEA raids on medical marijuana clinics.