District Attorney Seeks to Close Pot Dispensary

Delivering the first--but perhaps not the last--blow of the week against Andrea Nagy’s marijuana dispensary, lawyers with the Ventura County district attorney’s office filed a complaint Monday asking a judge to shut the operation down.

The six-page civil complaint is the first official action taken by authorities against Nagy, who began selling marijuana for medical use out of a Thousand Oaks office four months ago. Her operation has frustrated many officials who objected to the sale of marijuana but weren’t sure how to stop it.

In the complaint filed in Ventura County Superior Court on Monday, Deputy Dist. Atty. Mitchell F. Disney claims that despite Proposition 215, which legalized marijuana for medical use, Nagy is violating state laws governing business practices, the sale of controlled substances and public nuisances.

The suit seeks a temporary restraining order, permanent injunction and $27,500 in civil penalties against Nagy and her boyfriend, Robert Carson, whom Disney calls the facility’s manager. A hearing is scheduled for Wednesday.

“She’s breaking the law,” Disney said Monday. “Proposition 215 is essentially a grow-your-own statute to allow people with a doctor’s approval to grow their own marijuana to treat their symptoms. It wasn’t intended to allow marijuana emporiums.”

A 28-year-old Hungarian immigrant, Nagy opened the county’s first and only cannabis center in a Thousand Oaks business park in September, about a year after California voters approved the medical-marijuana initiative. The legal secretary, now on leave from her job, uses marijuana to treat her chronic migraines.

The new law, she has argued, is meaningless if seriously ill patients cannot buy marijuana. Nagy has previously suggested that she will not voluntarily agree to close down her dispensary, which serves almost 60 patients suffering from AIDS, cancer, glaucoma and other serious illnesses.

But she held her tongue on Monday. “I really don’t have any other comment except to say that we’re going to vigorously defend against this,” Nagy said after learning of the district attorney’s action.