RAID RIPS OUT POT GROWN BY ACTIVIST.

Byline: Cecilia Chan Daily News Staff Writer

Authorities destroyed more than five dozen pot plants and seized $20,000 in equipment during a raid Monday at the home of a cannabis activist who once operated a medical marijuana clinic in Thousand Oaks.

Responding to complaints, narcotics officers served a search warrant at the Mainmast Drive home of Andrea Nagy, and confiscated marijuana plants, packaged marijuana and equipment used for cultivating the plants, said Los Angeles County sheriff's Deputy Margarita Velazquez.

No arrest was made, and the case will be presented to the District Attorney's Office for consideration, she said.

Nagy said she was entitled to grow the marijuana because it was for her personal medical use.

``L.A. County sheriff's raided my home and confiscated all my medical marijuana,'' said Nagy, a legal secretary who uses marijuana to treat migraine headaches. ``I am a qualified patient.''

Nagy said her use of the plant is protected under the voter-approved Proposition 215, which provides a defense for people with a doctor's permission to grow marijuana for medical use.

Nagy said she showed the officer in charge of the 1 p.m. raid a court order ``that gives me the authority to transport and keep my plants.''

But Deputy District Attorney Mitch Disney said that March 26, 1998, order ``neither approves or prohibits her possession of marijuana for medicinal use.''

``The preliminary injunction that was issued in our case won't help her,'' he said.

Nagy said officers took $20,000 worth of equipment, such as lights and balances, and ripped out 64 plants that she and her mother were cultivating for their own medicinal purposes.

``I had just transplanted them. They were babies, all small and not flowering,'' she said. ``They were three months from completion.''

Nagy operated Ventura County's only medical marijuana dispensary in a mini-mall on Thousand Oaks Boulevard from October to March 1998, when it was temporarily closed by court order. She was providing service to about 60 clients.

The district attorney's case against Nagy is still pending. Disney said the trial is on hold pending the outcome of Nagy's appeal of the court order.

Nagy was charging her patients $300 an ounce for the marijuana on a sliding scale. Authorities said Nagy violated the law, which prohibited marijuana sales. Her attorney argued Nagy was not selling the pot but was being reimbursed by her clients for growing the plant.

A judge in March 1998 issued a court order expressly prohibiting Nagy to possess or cultivate the plant for personal use, however, Nagy's attorney argued the injunction only prohibited his client from engaging in activity that otherwise would be illegal.