In a milestone victory for the cannabis industry, the federal government agreed to drop its four-year bid to shut down Oakland’s Harborside Health Center, the biggest medical marijuana dispensary in the country with more than 100,000 patients, city leaders said Tuesday.

The Department of Justice did not immediately comment on the deal, which Harborside said still needed to be finalized, with all of the parties in the legal fight signing off.

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Legal experts said the reported deal was momentous. It underscores the country’s shift to a “new model” for dealing with marijuana, whether medicinal or recreational, said Robert MacCoun, a law professor and drug policy expert at Stanford University.

“The framework is moving from the war on drugs to tricky issues of regulation, taxation and who is going to be in control of this major new industry,” he said.

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MacCoun said there were two possible interpretations of the government’s decision to back off Harborside. Either prosecutors can’t make the case or they no longer want to make the case.

“In either interpretation, it’s a pretty significant shift,” MacCoun said. But he cautioned that the move does not mean the weed wars are won, explaining that it reflects the thinking of only President Obama’s administration.

“There is some uncertainty about what the new administration is going to do,” he said.