Elyria police raid alleged unlicensed Middle Avenue marijuana dispensary, charge operator with felonies

ELYRIA — Police on Friday raided an alleged unlicensed marijuana dispensary on Middle Avenue, arrested the operator on felony drug trafficking and drug possession charges and seized drugs, cash and a gun. Elyria police officers served a search warrant at Exotic Flower, 1600 Middle Ave., and seized multiple pounds of marijuana, suspected psychedelic psilocybin mushrooms, cash and a handgun with an extended magazine, the department said in a news release. They charged Brittany Jackson, 35, with trafficking in psilocybin in a school zone, trafficking in marijuana in a school zone, and two counts of felony drug possession. She also had an outstanding bench warrant for her arrest in an unrelated case, Elyria police said in a news release. Exotic Flower is less than 1,000 feet south of Hamilton Elementary School, which makes the drug charges more serious. Elyria police said the raid on an unlicensed dispensary is the first of its kind in Lorain County. The scene of the raid was a one-story tan cinder block building at the southeast corner of Middle Avenue and 16th Street. A black Elyria police SUV sat out front of the store, underneath signs reading "Exotic Flower," "Legal THC carts," and "CBD, Prerolls, +21." "Carts" is shorthand for vape "cartridges," which can be used in vaping devices to ingest THC. Across 16th Street as police investigated the inside of the dispensary stood Laura Jackson. She said she is Brittany Jackson's mother, and that her daughter worked with city officials to set up a fully licensed legal dispensary. The mother of the woman running the business said her daughter was fully licensed, that police were wrong to raid the business, that all the product inside was legal and that a gun police found belonged to a security guard who had it for protection. "Why would the city approve (Brittany Jackson's business) any of this if it wasn't legal?" Laura Jackson asked a reporter. All of Exotic Flower's inventory came from a warehouse in Cleveland and was bought legally, Laura Jackson said. "They've been wanting to close this place and it just opened," she said, though she didn't know the exact date it opened. "Everything in there is legal, paperwork, everything, legal. She's got every piece of paperwork." Unlicensed? "That's a lie," Laura Jackson said. "Everything we need, we got it." She said multiple convenience stores and gas stations in Elyria advertise and sell similar, illegal products and don't get raided. City officials inspected Brittany Jackson's business, and she did "everything she was supposed to do" to open it, Laura Jackson said. Speaking with a reporter outside Exotic Flower on Friday, Elyria Police Chief James Welsh said his department received a complaint the business was selling marijuana illegally. Welsh said there are only two licensed legal dispensaries in Elyria. One is FRX Elyria Craft Cannabis Dispensary at 709 Sugar Lane, and Nirvana at 914 Cleveland St. Both are dual-licensed to sell medical and recreational marijuana products according to state licensing records and the city of Elyria. Not so Exotic Flower, Welsh said. "We confirmed they were selling marijuana out of here, so essentially just trafficking drugs," he said. "They don't have a license." That the business did not have a license to operate as a dispensary was confirmed with state officials, Welsh said. Additionally, the two legal dispensaries in the city are required to have security measures in place. Exotic Flower doesn't, said Welsh. He said he was one of the officers who inspected Nirvana on Cleveland Street to make sure it complied with security regulations. At Exotic Flower, "the door is wide open. We've already had somebody break into this business a couple weeks ago," he said. Concerned about violence such as robberies or more break-ins, Narcotics Unit detectives confirmed marijuana was being sold inside, got a search warrant from a Lorain County Common Pleas Court judge and executed the warrant early Friday afternoon. Jackson and Exotic Flower claiming to sell hemp or low-level THC products is "inaccurate," Welsh said, especially since his detectives found illegal psilocybin mushrooms during the raid. "Whether it's marijuana, cocaine, heroin, we take it all seriously. If you're selling it illegally, we're going to target it," he said. The city Building Departent also determined Exotic Flower didn't comply with city buiding code, said Welsh, who escorted Elyria Fire Department personnel into the building after speaking with a reporter. Elyria Safety Service Director Chris Pyanowski said Brittany Jackson never got permission from the city to open up a dispensary. She couldn't get a license even if she wanted to, because the only two state-approved licenses for dispensaries in the city are already active and taken by FRX and Nirvana. He said Chief Building Official Darryl Farkas gave Brittany Jackson a special inspection request form and asked her to fill it out in August. She didn't do that, Pyanowski said. "No occupancy (permits) or anything that might be normal for a business to open were ever completed with our Building Department," he said. There was no explanation of why Brittany Jackson would display something like a license if, according to police and city officials, she did not legally have one. It wasn't clear if pretending to have a dispensary license is a crime in itself. Police did not say anyone else was arrested, though a man in a maroon minivan pulled up during the raid, entered the front door of the business after walking past a marked police cruiser, then quickly turned around and left. Ohio voters decriminalized recreational marijuana use in 2023, legalizing the cultivation, possession, sale, purchase and recreational use of marijuana/cannabis by adults 21 and up. The vote was 57 percent for to 43 percent against statewide. In Lorain County, the vote was 60 percent for legalization to 40 percent against it. Besides the two in Elyria, Lorain County has two other licensed dispensaries: The Citizen by Klutch at 5152 Grove Ave. in Lorain and RISE Lorain at 1920 Cooper Foster Park Road, according to the Ohio Department of Commerce's Division of Cannabis Control. The dispensary on Sugar Lane in Elyria, which opened in 2019 as The Clubhouse and has since been renamed, was the first to legally open in Lorain County selling medical marijuana, which was legalized in Ohio in 2016. Contact Dave O'Brien at (440) 329-7129 or dobrien@chroniclet.com