And for being so bold, the club now may be slapped with a lawsuit from the city.
The Mountain View City Council decided in closed session Tuesday to take legal action against Buddy's Cannabis Patient Collective, a medical marijuana operation that opened April 10 on the 2600 block of Bayshore Parkway, city officials confirmed.
The city council voted in February to ban dispensaries, saying it wants to eventually allow medical marijuana clubs but needs time to develop regulations.
Despite the ban, Matt Lucero, an attorney and Campbell resident, opened Buddy's with his nephew Jesse. Matt Lucero said he believes Mountain View's ordinance is illegal and he was not willing to wait another year while the city develops regulations.
He had been searching for a site in Santa Clara County to open a collective, found one he liked in Mountain View, and signed his lease a week after the city council passed a ban, Lucero said. He chose Mountain View partly because its council members appeared open to the idea of allowing dispensaries.
"There's not one city in this county that has a lawful ordinance allowing for medical marijuana collectives and cooperatives to operate," Lucero said. "I'm not willing to wait any longer."
Lucero said city officials told him Wednesday they intend to sue and seek a preliminary court injunction to stop him from distributing marijuana.
"It will not be a criminal action but (acting City Attorney Jannie Quinn) will file whatever she needs to file to get him to stop," said Council Member Tom Means, who visited the dispensary with Quinn and other city officials recently.
Means said that during the visit, "everything, I think, was cordial ... though (Quinn) was telling him 'You don't have the right to do this.' "
Quinn could not be reached for comment Wednesday afternoon.
Council Member Margaret Abe-Koga said she thinks there was a misunderstanding about the council's intent when it passed the ban, which was only intended to buy the city time.
"I wish folks would have understood that and they would have just waited until we could have had the time we needed to study the issue better," she said.
Mountain View's ban violates constitutional rights of due process and equal protection, Lucero said, plus it's pre-empted by state law that legalized medical marijuana several years ago. He said he made millions as a corporate attorney and has the finances to fight the city.
"Bottom line: I'm not going away," Lucero said. "For the sake of the people of Mountain View, I'm not going away. I'm ready for the fight."
The collective is inside warehouse space in an industrial area off Highway 101. Clients first enter a gated waiting room where they fill out membership information. Collective staff use online systems or call doctors and the Medical Board of California to verify new clients have been prescribed medical marijuana by a legitimate doctor.
Inside, the warehouse is painted a Pepto-Bismol pink with a black-and-white checkerboard floor. The space is open, with a stereo playing electronic music and a few staff members sitting at computers and answering phones. A mural depicting the Virgin Mary is painted on one wall, as a donation by an artist who supports the medical marijuana cause, Lucero said. He's recruiting other artists to display and sell their work there, and hopes to turn the facility into a sort of "community center."
The collective's goods are stored in a large vault and the building is protected by barred windows, motion sensors and other security measures, Lucero said.
More than 100 members have joined the collective since it opened, Lucero said, and it has 12 employees. He said he has been amazed at the response he's gotten from sick people who previously had to drive all over the Bay Area to find medical marijuana.
"I've never been hugged by so many people in my life," he said.
Source: Mercury News
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