The sheriff's office has yet to finish investigating Sarich's marijuana business, Urquhart says. But assuming it finds the case worthy of turning over to Satterberg's office or the U.S. Attorney's Office, the question then becomes: What will prosecutors do?
Satterberg and the U.S. Attorney's office both decline to speculate. But Satterberg does say that he considers dispensaries in general to be illegal. And though he recognizes that patients need someplace to get marijuana, he says that a lot of people growing and buying pot in one place presents a problem. Such an enterprise "becomes a target for violence in the neighborhood," he says, as demonstrated by what happened "over at the Sarich house." Other dispensaries have become targets too, but Sarich is unusual in locating his in such a quiet, upscale suburban neighborhood. Other dispensaries can be found in commercial or relatively busy urban neighborhoods like SoDo, Georgetown, or Fremont. Satterberg's favored solution is to make pot available in "state-licensed pharmacies."
John Keatley
Sarich at home: The brownies help him sleep.
John Keatley
Way past the limit: Sarich in his grow shed.
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If Satterberg or the U.S. Attorney does press charges, it could have a chilling effect on the burgeoning dispensary industry. True, other dispensaries are trying to distance themselves from Sarich by saying they do things differently. But as Alison Holcomb, drug-policy director of the ACLU of Washington, points out, prosecutors could issue a statement as they press charges that puts all dispensaries on notice. On the other hand, if prosecutors don't take action, it will likely embolden dispensaries all the more. Says Fennell: "If none of us get arrested, we pretty much made dispensaries legal."
As the debates swirl around him, Sarich charges on. In late April, he moved his residence to a seven-acre property he is renting from a landlord who was willing to write into the lease, according to Sarich, that marijuana will be grown on the premises. Showing a reporter around the place on the condition that its location be identified only as "east of Issaquah," he strides across the broad lawn to a fish pond at the far end of the property, and talks about the barbecues he intends to have for patients.
He then walks over to the property's key amenity: a greenhouse, much bigger than the grow room he had in Kirkland. In that limited space, he grew plants only for cuttings, rather than for harvesting usable pot, which he bought elsewhere (from a source he declines to name). Now, he says, he'll have the space to produce his own buds.
Sarich also has big plans to reopen his dispensary. He's found a site in SoDo on First Avenue South. He says he's working on getting a business license, which he will register to a nonprofit he intends to create. A nonprofit? But what about his disdain for that model? Still true, Sarich says, but he adds that he's betting that should dispensaries become legal, the state will require them to forego profit.
Is Sarich backing down? Not in the rhetorical department. He produces a copy of an e-mail from an official in the sheriff's office that he recently got through a public disclosure request. In the e-mail, the official tells an FBI employee that she intends to deny Sarich permission to buy a gun and asks what the FBI thinks—proof, Sarich says, that it was not the feds who were driving the decision, as the Sheriff's office had claimed, but the local agency.
"We'll sue the hell out of 'em," he says.
nshapiro@seattleweekly.com
