By Tim Clifford

On 16th Ave. S.W., at 9817, the signage that adorns the downstairs space is very telling of the last month for medical marijuana in King County. By the door buzzer there is a small sign stating that the space is a collective garden and medical marijuana patients only are welcome. Look to the door and you will see a “notice to public officials” posted in anticipation of a police raid, with declarations such as “You Do Not have consent to enter or search this premise” and “No person in this facility consents to questioning”.

Go around to the store’s front window and you will be greeted with a series of large banners stating “We Are Closed” and “Sorry, we are done son!” with a “frowny” face.

On July 8, King County officials held a press conference announcing that due to recent amendments to initiative 502, all collective gardens and medical marijuana dispensaries would need to shut down immediately. Owners of the 15 establishments plus their landlords were each sent notices to cease and desist at once.

Standing shoulder to shoulder at a microphone in front of the Sheriff’s store front on 16th Ave. Sheriff John Urquhart, Prosecuting Attorney Dan Satterburg, and Russ Hauge of the state’s Liquor and Cannabis board announced a deadline of early August for 15 unlicensed dispensaries across the county to shut down.

While last week the deadline was extended to October, the change that King County wishes to implement is already beginning to show.

This week the Westside Weekly spoke with Elizabeth Gordon of Bud Nation, a recreational shop located at 9640 on 16th Ave. S.W., and asked for her reaction to the county wide shutdown of dispensaries and how this has affected White Center marijuana sales in general.

“Well, it was helpful to know what the county’s timeline and action was going to be. In this area there was a lot of uncertainty among community groups, among businesses both involved in the marijuana industry and those not involved in the marijuana industry as to what was going to happen and when it was going to happen,” she said.

While Bud Nation is a licensed recreational shop, the announcement by the county brought mixed feelings.

“Because we are licensed we knew that we would be staying open. From a business perspective as the different medical dispensaries are shut down we obviously will have more customers and less competition. However, it was a difficult press conference because the way the county decided to go about it means that people’s livelihoods are being affected dramatically, including neighbors and business owners that we know,” she said.

At the press conference Bud Nation was name-dropped numerous times as an example of how King County wants licensed marijuana sales to proceed. Their next-door neighbor, NW Cannabis Market, a medical dispensary, was pointed to as an example of an “illegal operation” and ordered to shut down immediately.

Because of this, an assumption has grown that Bud Nation is somehow “favored” by the county, but according to Gordon, nothing could be further from the truth and there is much more to this issue for both recreational and medical marijuana sales.

“It seemed like there was an assumption that all medical dispensaries are a façade for something else when there are a number of legitimate medical patients who need their medicine and doing things as quickly as King County initially proposed would limit their ability to find other providers and develop those relationships,” she said.

It also didn’t sit well with her the way in which the press conference was organized. The dispensary owners as well as the press received notice of the conference a little over 12 hours in advance. Many, including Gordon, felt that this was a shady tactic by the county to reduce the number of attendants that morning.

She went on to say that following that press conference and a recent story on Q13 Fox, Bud Nation has received threatening phone calls and threats from supporters and patrons of NW Cannabis.

“In the media lately Bud Nation in particular has been portrayed as “we want everybody to shut down and we think medical marijuana is the bad guys” and that is not true, not true at all,” she said.

Opened a little over two months ago, Bud Nation has taken over the store front where Uncle Mike’s Superlicious BBQ once was (it still operates out of the back of the building). As Gordon explains, the NW Cannabis Market has held their storefront for around five years and essentially helped to create a market for marijuana sales in White Center.

“If you’re a family restaurant and families don’t want to come here because it smells like weed, that affects your business,” explained Gordon. As business dwindled for BBQ, the other owners of Uncle Mike’s, and Gordon, came up with a plan to change course.

“We’re here because the opportunity presented itself and we saw with the changing legislation there was going to be a need for people to obtain legal marijuana in a regulated setting,” she explained.

Though it has been a long and tedious process to get licensing, Bud Nation began prepping their location in February and started selling earlier this summer. All sales are made with cash so as not to violate interstate commerce laws. Edibles that need to be heated or frozen are prohibited and products must pass testing and come from a commercial kitchen.

When asked about the signs at 9817, Gordon explained that some of the dispensaries that initially had wanted to put up the good fight either shut down voluntarily for fear that causing trouble with the county would interfere with their filing for a license or were forced to by their landlords.

Across the street, literally a stone’s throw away from the Sheriff’s Office store front in White Center sits Herban Legend, at 9619, a medical marijuana operation whose owner couldn’t have been more let down by receiving the notice to cease and desist from the county.

“I was pretty disappointed because I personally had put in a lot of work. I am a member of a trade organization called the Coalition of Cannabis Standards and Ethics and we formed about four years ago specifically to try and get some regulation,” said Herban Legend owner Chris Cody.

Urqhart, Satterburg, and Hauge each spoke of the medical dispensaries as operations that have been evading taxes and regulation for years, presenting them as the boogeymen to legalized marijuana sales. Opened in May of 2011, Herban Legend was truly a passion project for Cody. He had seen the good that medical marijuana had done for parents of his friends, one with a father with pancreatic cancer and the other with a father who developed a degenerative mental disease. Ever since opening his doors he has tried to be a good neighbor and a positive aspect of White Center.

For a long time he didn’t put up any signage for his business out of respect for the other businesses surrounding him, worried that the stigma of marijuana sales would bother them. As he described it, his relationships now with the other business owners on the block and his landlord are all very positive.

However, Cody knew the day was coming he’d have to close his doors. To start, the back side of the building his business is in rests exactly 1,000 feet from the Holy Family Catholic School on Roxbury, thus imposing on the school’s drug free zone. Cody’s business was grandfathered in to its location and managed to get past this rule until now.

When the letter from the county that he received informed him that even if he applied for a license he would still have to shut down since he is within that buffer zone, he wasn’t surprised. Because of this he already has another location set up.

“But I haven’t moved yet and I assumed there would be some sort of a grace period between the time it was passed and the time I could apply with the liquor board,” he said.

What disheartens him the most about the county’s actions is that licensing and regulations is exactly what he has wanted and supported, he just had hoped it wouldn’t come at the cost of him having to shut his doors for any period of time.

“I’ve always only ever asked for a path. Some sort of path to being a licensed business because I have always run my business like it is a business. We’re not like some redneck moonshiners just trying to make a buck. I try to run it like I care because I frickin’ do.”

*The Westside Weekly attempted multiple times to speak with an owner or manager at NW Cannabis Market. Workers at the dispensary explained that the owners and employees were all becoming leery of the media after what they considered to be a series of misrepresentations in the media.