18,000 joints seized from Nipomo pot warehouse. LA-based company had no license, CA says
State officials filed a civil action in San Luis Obispo Superior Court against a Los Angeles-based cannabis company after a search of its Nipomo warehouse allegedly revealed the company was operating without a processor’s license.
The California Attorney General’s Office, on behalf of the state Department of Food and Agriculture, filed a civil complaint Friday against Lowell Farms, also known as Lowell Herb Co., as well as its CEO, David Elias, and co-owner Brett Myers Vapnek for alleged violation of the Medicinal and Adult-Use Cannabis Regulation and Safety Act.
On March 13, state authorities raided the company’s warehouse located in the 800 block of Mesa Road in Nipomo, according to the Attorney General’s Office. The facility was used to process and store cannabis for Lowell Herb Co.’s well-known brand of pre-rolled joints.
During the operation, officers with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife seized 184 boxes containing about 18,000 pre-rolled joints and a tote locker containing approximately 19 lbs of pre-rolled joints, according to the complaint.
The department also seized 55 boxes containing about 7,100 glass jars of cannabis flower, 90 tote lockers containing about 678 lbs of untrimmed flower, and other more containers carrying hundreds of pounds of marijuana byproduct, the filing states.
During that seizure, Myers Vapnek “admitted that (the companies) were processing cannabis packaged as Lowell Herb Co. on the Mesa Property without a license for a period of time,” the complaint reads.
The filing states that the companies were operating without a valid processor license for approximately three months, between December 2018 and March 2019.
The supervising deputy attorney general who filed the complaint in San Luis Obispo Superior Court, Stacey Roberts, did not return requests for comment and additional information Monday or Tuesday.
Several email addresses listed on Lowell Farms’ website as its media, sales and general information contacts were not valid as of Tuesday, and Elias or Myers Vapnek could not be reached for comment.
According to the complaint, the defendants are liable for civil penalties of up to three times the amount of the license fee for each day of each violation for engaging in cannabis activity without a license.
The annual license fee for a processor license is $9,370, the complaint states.
If they lose their case, the defendants are also liable for the cost of the destruction of their products based on their non-compliance, the state says.
“By engaging in unlicensed commercial cannabis activity, Defendants placed unregulated cannabis into the cannabis market, thereby causing economic harm to California’s legal commercial cannabis industry and supporting the illegal cannabis market,” Roberts wrote in the complaint. “Defendants’ distribution and sale of illegal products that are potentially untested and/or do not meet the safety standards under the (cannabis regulation and safety act) and its implementing regulations create grave public health and safety risks to Californians.”
Lowell Farms is well-known in the Los Angeles legal cannabis community, having been featured in publications such as The Los Angeles Times, High Times and Vice.
Its CEO, Elias, was a featured guest on a CNBC segment in April about the future of the ”cannabis craze.”
A case management conference in the civil case has been scheduled for April. 20.
This story was originally published December 18, 2019 at 12:10 PM.
