Thousand Oaks Pot Outlet to Remain Closed Pending Trial

The doors of Ventura County’s only medical marijuana outlet will remain closed until the case goes to trial at an undetermined date, a judge ruled Monday.

The ruling extends indefinitely a Feb. 4 order that shut down the Thousand Oaks outlet. The temporary restraining order had been due to expire Monday.

In his ruling, Superior Court Judge William Peck said the operators of the cannabis club did not fit the definition of “caregivers” laid out in Proposition 215, the state law that permits the use of marijuana for medical reasons.

Peck forbade activist Andrea Nagy and her boyfriend, Robert Carson, from selling, distributing or giving pot to the ill.

“I think that a person does not qualify as a caregiver just because they are the sole supplier of medicinal marijuana,” Peck said. “A caregiver is not a supplier.”

His ruling comes just days after a state Supreme Court decision cleared the way for state officials to shut down several cannabis clubs in Northern California. A San Francisco judge Thursday ordered the first club to be closed.

Until early last month, Nagy and Carson quietly dispensed medical marijuana from a Thousand Oaks strip mall to about 60 people with diseases such as cancer, glaucoma, AIDS and multiple sclerosis.

Under Peck’s ruling, Nagy and Carson, the operators of the Rainbow Country Ventura County Medical Cannabis Center, will now be able to possess and cultivate only enough pot to treat their own ailments.

But how much that is will not be determined until March 26, when another hearing on the matter is scheduled.

Saying he has never smoked marijuana, Peck acknowledged he is “a babe in the woods” when it comes to how much people need for personal use.

Defense attorneys proposed a monthly limit of 5 ounces each for Nagy and Carson. They also asked that the two medicinal-marijuana activists be able to continue to cultivate the 120 marijuana plants needed to ensure that yield.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Mitchell Disney, however, said he wants evidence to show that Nagy and Carson need medicinal marijuana, including doctors prescriptions setting forth frequency and dosage.

Ultimately the decision about whether the cannabis center can operate will be determined in a civil suit filed by the district attorney’s office last month. The suit contends that the center is a threat to public health and safety and engages in “anticompetitive, unfair, fraudulent and unlawful business practices.”

Nagy opened the center about a year after California voters approved the Proposition 215 in 1996.

At the end of Monday’s hearing, Nagy’s attorney, James Silva, said the judge’s decision “puts us right back where we were this morning.”

Outside the courtroom, Carson’s attorney, William Panzer, who helped draft Proposition 215, sharply criticized the decision.

Prosecutors “have confirmed as strongly as possible that they don’t want patients to get medicine,” Panzer said. “They would rather send people with debilitating diseases back out on the street.”

Nagy concurred.

“This is a slap in the face of every dying person in the state,” she said.

Nevertheless, Nagy said she thinks about one-third of her clients will still be able to receive medicinal marijuana under the judge’s narrow definition of “caregiver.”

But no testimony was heard on that point Monday.

The courtroom was crowded with pot proponents from all over the state.

Young people with T-shirts showing a pot leaf superimposed on a red cross were scattered through the courtroom. The back of their shirts read: “San Diego Cannabis Club. Education. Support. Compassion.”

Many of Nagy’s patients--some in wheelchairs--squeezed into the back of the courtroom.

“I’m hoping I’ll still be able to get [marijuana] around here,” said Jeri-May Starkey, 43, who uses it to alleviate the pain of her multiple sclerosis and stimulate her diabetes-suppressed appetite. “I mean, what am I going to do, hike to Los Angeles?”