Legal User Rents Space for Cannabis Buyers’ Club

A 27-year-old woman legally permitted to smoke marijuana to ease the pain of her chronic migraine headaches has rented space in a local business center in hopes of opening Ventura County’s first cannabis buyers’ club.

Andrea Nagy, who works as a legal secretary, has purchased a city business license for a “pharmaceutical-related” operation and has rented a 360-square-foot storefront in the Village Oaks office complex on Thousand Oaks Boulevard.

There, she hopes to grow 180 plants at a time in various stages of maturity and sell the marijuana to people who have a doctor’s permission to use the illicit weed as medicine.

“I look at this as a rational and reasonable way of moving forward the acceptance of what the general public wants,” said Nagy, who obtained her doctor’s permission to smoke pot the day after California voters approved Proposition 215 allowing for the medicinal use of marijuana.

Not so fast, city officials say.

To be sure, a store that sells pot is not something covered by city zoning law.

And the district attorney has vowed to prosecute anyone who attempts to operate a marijuana buyers’ club in Ventura County.

Still, Nagy insists that under Proposition 215, the so-called Compassionate Use Act of 1996, she can legally dispense marijuana to “seriously ill” people to treat their medical conditions.

But her intentions to operate out of a Thousand Oaks business center have alarmed and caught officials off guard in this conservative, family oriented community.

“I’m not one that likes narcotics sold out of homes and stores,” said Mayor Pro-Tem Michael Markey, a Compton police detective.

“We haven’t ever looked at something like this before,” Deputy City Atty. Jim Friedl said.

Proposition 215 does not define a serious illness and conflicts with federal drug laws that still outlaw the cultivation, use and sale of marijuana, city officials say.

More troubling in this case, they say, the law holds that the sick can smoke marijuana, but is silent on how sick people are supposed to obtain it.

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Doctors cannot prescribe marijuana without risking their licenses to prescribe medicine.

Nagy, an advocate for the outright legalization of marijuana, argues that with the passage of Proposition 215, the sick have the right to obtain a safe alternative to buying marijuana on the black market. That is why she plans to grow high-grade marijuana in the back room of her storefront and sell it on a nonprofit basis.

Nagy met with Friedl and Thousand Oaks Sheriff’s Capt. Christopher Godfrey last week to talk about her intentions.

With or without the city and law enforcement’s blessing, she plans to open the Rainbow Country marijuana buyers’ club “within a couple of weeks” if she hears nothing back from city officials, who are seeking the advice of the district attorney.

“I’m basically taking it upon myself,” Nagy said. “I’m willing to move on it so something is done in this regard.”

Although some California cities have looked the other way as buyers’ clubs quietly opened their doors after the passage of Proposition 215, Ventura County Dist. Atty. Michael D. Bradbury has said he has no intention of letting such centers operate here.

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Proposition 215 did nothing to change federal laws banning the cultivation and sale of marijuana, even if it is for medical purposes, Bradbury has said.

“The law currently prohibits cannabis buyers’ clubs,” Bradbury said recently. “I will enforce the law.”

Although he refused comment Tuesday on Nagy’s intentions, Bradbury has been anything but silent on his opposition to the medicinal use of marijuana.

He has called Proposition 215 a smoke screen for the legalization of marijuana and a measure that represents a setback to the nation’s war on drugs.

Although Bradbury’s position seems clear, Friedl said he mailed a letter to the district attorney’s office on Tuesday seeking advice on how to handle Nagy’s request for a city ordinance governing buyers’ clubs in Thousand Oaks.

Even if the district attorney backed a cannabis club, Friedl said, drafting an ordinance that spells out the conditions under which the city would issue permits for such a business to operate would likely take a year or more.

Godfrey said the measure “has enough loopholes to drive a truck through.”

“It puts us in a precarious situation as a municipality about how to approach this,” said Godfrey, who is the city’s assistant chief of police. “We’re going to take it one step at a time. I am sure, without question, that it will be a topic of discussion when and if it [comes] before the City Council.”

Thousand Oaks Mayor Pro-Tem Markey said a cannabis buyers’ club “is something that is not appropriate for Thousand Oaks.”

“What the legal requirements are--what she [Nagy] can and cannot do--is going to be determined by the police chief and the city attorney,” he said.

Yet Nagy remains undeterred. She said she is trying to take the legally required route to getting her business approved, and promises a rigorous screening process for clients.

Godfrey said he expects the Sheriff’s Department to “step very lightly on this” if Nagy indeed does decide to open her doors without the proper permits.

“I don’t think we’re going to break down the doors and arrest her, but it’s difficult for me to say,” Godfrey said. “It depends on what kind of statement comes from the district attorney and the kind of position our city is going to take.”

Scott Inmer, director of the Los Angeles Cannabis Buyers Club in West Hollywood, said buyers’ clubs that have been successful are the ones established by the sick or their family members who are able to persuade law enforcement officials that their efforts were legitimate acts of necessity.

But in the wake of Proposition 215, Inmer said, more and more entrepreneurs and legalization advocates are attempting to open such clubs under the guise of medicine.

Backers of the measure promised voters they would be rational and responsible with the new law, Inmer said, and anyone running a buyers’ club needs to honor that commitment.

“If people are truly concerned about only legitimate people getting the marijuana, and if people are truly concerned about keeping it out of the hands of young people, then we all need to come together,” he said. “This is not brain surgery.”