RESTRAINING ORDER CLOSES OUTLET FOR MEDICAL MARIJUANA

Prop. 215: Prosecutors and cannabis seller accept judge's decision to shut
down dispensary at least until March court hearing on its legality.

THOUSAND OAKS--The owner of Ventura County's only medical marijuana outlet
closed her doors Wednesday and will not reopen them before March 2,
allowing a judge time to consider whether to shutter the cannabis center
for good.

With the consent of county prosecutors and medicinal marijuana activist
Andrea Nagy, Superior Court Judge William L. Peck on Wednesday issued a
temporary restraining order against the Rainbow Country Ventura County
Medical Cannabis Center in Thousand Oaks. The order will prevent Nagy and
her boyfriend, Robert Carson, from selling marijuana to people with such
diseases as cancer, glaucoma, AIDS and multiple sclerosis at least until
the March court hearing.

It was the second blow to Nagy's operation in two days, coming after a
decision by the Thousand Oaks City Council to write stiff new zoning rules
that could ban marijuana dispensaries.

"Let me issue this temporary restraining order without it being any
indication of how I'm going to rule" on prosecutors' requests for
preliminary and permanent injunctions, Peck said Wednesday. "It's simply
restraining the defendants from distributing, selling or otherwise making
available marijuana to anybody other than themselves for medicinal
purposes," he added. "It's shutting down the facility for a short period of
time."

However, "Andrea and Robert will be able to grow and possess and cultivate
medical cannabis for their own personal use," said Nagy's attorney, James
M. Silva. "They cannot provide cannabis to others."

At the March 2 hearing, Peck will consider a request from the Ventura
County district attorney's office for a preliminary injunction that would
close the area's first and only marijuana dispensary until a civil suit
against Nagy goes to trial. In the interim, Nagy's legal team will have
time to file briefs explaining why the center should remain open.

Contending that the cannabis center is a threat to public health and safety
and engages in "anti-competitive, unfair, fraudulent and unlawful business
practices," the district attorney's office on Monday filed a civil suit
seeking to permanently close the pot outlet.

Nagy opened the center in Thousand Oaks about a year after California
voters approved the medical marijuana initiative, Proposition 215, in 1996.

County prosecutors are also requesting permission to seize the cannabis
center's furniture, destroy its thriving back-room crop and possibly fine
Nagy and Carson more than $25,000 each. But the ultimate goal is compliance
with the law, not fines, Deputy Dist. Atty. Mitch Disney said. By agreeing
to temporarily close her doors, Nagy avoided a harsher restraining order
proposed by Disney.

Nonetheless, the prosecutor called the order fair.

"The judge enforced California law," Disney said. "The restraining order
recognizes that the people of California, in enacting Prop. 215, did not
intend to legalize the sale of marijuana or the warehousing of large
quantities of the drug."

However, Peck would not allow police to seize Nagy's thriving marijuana
crop, as Disney had requested. Recently, the 28-year-old Nagy has found
herself embroiled in legal and zoning battles with county prosecutors and
Thousand Oaks city leaders. Officials treated her gingerly when her
cannabis center opened in an office park in September, awaiting court
interpretation of the state's voter-approved medical marijuana initiative.

The topic is a tricky one because the new state law conflicts with federal
laws that prohibit growing, distributing or possessing the illicit weed.
But a December appellate decision, which said Proposition 215 did not make
cannabis centers legal, seems to have emboldened local authorities. That
decision, which was related to a very large San Francisco pot club, is
being appealed to the state Supreme Court.

Now Nagy, a legal secretary who uses marijuana to treat her chronic
migraines, has been barraged with challenges to her dispensary. The first
was the civil suit filed by the district attorney's office. The next salvo
landed Tuesday night, when the Thousand Oaks City Council gave initial
approval to new zoning regulations that would ban all marijuana
dispensaries in the city. Furthermore, city leaders decided that the new
rules--which would not take effect for several months--should be used to
put the cannabis center out of business.

But Nagy's clients were fuming about the council's action. "I'd like to
know what we're supposed to do for our medicine now," said Kathleen DiSilva
after the vote. The 37-year-old mother, who has undergone 13 intestinal
surgeries in two years, uses marijuana to treat her Crohn's disease and
ulcerative colitis.

Copyright Los Angeles Times