Police arrest two in Eugene pot raid
Detectives close a medical marijuana center, but an attorney suggests police may have acted too quickly
By Jack Moran

The Register-Guard

In the second such raid in nine months, local detectives on Thursday shut down a local medical marijuana “resource center” and arrested its workers on drug-dealing charges.

Detectives with Lane County’s Interagency Narcotics Enforcement Team took two women into custody while serving a search warrant at The Greener Side, a state-registered nonprofit business that opened late last year near downtown Eugene.

The suspects — identified as Jill Marie Tanner, 32, and Chelsea Nicole Hopkins, 25 — were being held Thursday evening in the Lane County Jail on felony charges of marijuana delivery. They are accused of illegally peddling marijuana from a shop housed in an office complex at 1601 Oak St.

“It’s kind of hard to argue that they’re not selling it,” state police Sgt. Erik Fisher said.

Fisher, who serves as the drug team’s commander, said an unknown amount of marijuana was seized from the business along with business records and other evidence.

Detectives on Thursday served a second search warrant at a home off River Road in connection with the investigation. One of the suspects resides there, Eugene attorney Brian Michaels said.

Michaels, who represents both Tanner and Hopkins, said Thursday that police wrongfully targeted The Greener Side.

“From what little I know (of the operation), they were attempting to lawfully provide medicine to legitimate medical marijuana cardholders — not for profit,” Michaels said. “It appears at this point that police may have jumped the gun, but we’ll see how it plays out.”

Michaels also represents Curtis Shimmin, a Douglas County resident who operated a similar medical marijuana outlet on West 11th Avenue in Eugene that was shut down last August by the same drug team that on Thursday busted The Greener Side.

Shimmin pleaded not guilty in April to a dozen felony charges, including racketeering, money laundering and delivering marijuana. His trial is scheduled to begin June 11 in Lane County Circuit Court.

Michaels declined to compare Shimmin’s business model to that of The Greener Side.
Thursday’s raid was done in conjunction with a similar operation carried out by a drug team in Southern Oregon. Detectives there served eight warrants in connection with three “drug trafficking organizations” that allegedly sold marijuana from storefronts in Jackson County, according to a news release.

Authorities suspect some of the people involved with the Jackson County outlets are familiar with those affiliated with The Greener Side.

“I think there are some common ties,” Fisher said.

A number of medical marijuana outlets in Oregon have been raided by police in recent months. Many similar, unregulated businesses remain open elsewhere across the state.

Oregon voters in 2010 rejected a ballot measure that would have legalized medical marijuana dispensaries, but lawmakers are now considering a bill that would allow state-licensed retailers to operate in Oregon.

Some medical pot patients say local marijuana clubs offer them a safe and dependable way to get the medicine they need to treat severe pain and other ailments.

But while medical pot use remains legal in Oregon, its sale is considered illegal.

Shimmin said in a 2011 interview with The Register-Guard that the cash-for-pot transactions that occurred at his business — which he said operated as a “club” — were not technically sales. He said most of the money paid by club members for access to marijuana was used to reimburse growers, who returned a “small amount” of cash to the club for “storage and handling.”

Under state law, patients who don’t grow their own pot may find someone else to grow it for them, but growers may only recoup the costs of producing the marijuana, without making a profit. State-registered patients may give excess marijuana to another cardholder.

Shimmin said his club distributed only excess pot that growers were left with after their patients took what they needed. By allowing growers to pass along marijuana to the club, cardholders were essentially giving it to other cardholders, Shimmin said.

More than 5,700 people in Lane County are registered medical marijuana patients, according to statistics kept by the state agency that administers the program.