Dr. Reefer’s Business Goes to Pot
A couple of years back, a guy named Pierre Werner went to prison. It made the papers. It was his own fault.
The prison sentence followed Werner getting caught growing many dozens of marijuana plants in his house, which he swears he was doing for medical purposes.
The growing of the pot plants came after much pot smoking -- a lot of it, he admitted, had nothing to do with the drug's medicinal qualities.
All that pot smoking came after a prison stint in New Jersey for, well, for selling lots and lots of pot.
The Jersey time came after an episode involving nudity and an ill-fated attempt at walking from Southern California to Las Vegas.
The naked episode came after many other strange things in the life of Pierre Werner.
The latest bit of strange?
The Dr. Reefer billboard out on Decatur Boulevard near the Las Vegas Beltway in the southern end of town. It's an ad for a business that hooks up potential marijuana smokers with a doctor who will help them do it legally.
"I've always considered marijuana a medicine," said Werner, now 37 and out of prison. "Just the way it makes me feel."
Werner got out of prison back in November. He is unemployed and lives with his mother. He's on parole until next month, which means he's drug tested all the time.
Werner swears he's not smoking right now.
As soon as his parole is over, he's leaving Nevada for good, he said. He can't take it anymore. And besides, if he gets caught selling pot here again, he could get locked up for 20 years.
"There's no way I'll sell marijuana in Nevada," he said. "I don't even want to stay in Nevada. No thanks. Not worth it."
He wants to go to Amsterdam, where he was born, or to California, which is more friendly to medical marijuana smokers.
Nevada's voters legalized marijuana for medical purposes in 2000. Patients who have been diagnosed with a qualifying condition (cancer or glaucoma, among others) are allowed to possess small amounts of the drug.
They also are allowed to grow it for their own use.
They are not allowed to grow it for lots and lots of people and then sell it to them.
Which is where Werner got into trouble in 2004.
He was an outspoken advocate of medical marijuana then. He admitted that he was your basic recreational user before a 1998 incident in which he simply lost it, psychologically speaking.
In Southern California at the time, he decided he needed to be in Las Vegas. And so he stripped all his clothes off and began to walk.
That led, eventually, to a diagnosis: bipolar disorder. He was given lithium, which "turned me into a zombie," he said.
However, pot fixed everything, he said.
He began operating a business in Las Vegas that helped patients connect with doctors.
He talked of opening a cannabis club, like they have in California. He grew his own pot. He also decided that he would grow pot for other patients.
That is illegal.
"My medicine was the best in the world," he said.
According to the state Department of Health, the law for people registered in the medical marijuana program allows the possession of 1 ounce of marijuana; the possession of four mature marijuana plants; and the possession of three immature marijuana plants.
When the cops were called to Werner's house, they found dozens of pot plants.
He went to prison.
And what of his referral business? That's where his mother comes in.
Whenever patients would call the business while Werner was in prison, his mom would help them out. He would give her advice over the phone, from prison, on how to work the system.
Now, she operates the business, drreefer.com, full time. Werner swears he has nothing to do with it now, other than promoting it.
"It bothered me," said Reyna Barnett, 58, Werner's mom, when asked about his pot smoking as a young man.
She hated that he smoked pot, that he sold it, and that he went to prison for it.
And then came the bipolar diagnosis. The zombie-like lithium experience.
Marijuana seemed to fix him, Barnett said. And so she began to sympathize.
More and more, she worked with the patients that her son used to help.
"I like to help people," she said.
What she does, for a fee, is help people fill out the necessary government paperwork.
She helps them make an appointment with a cause-friendly doctor (any licensed doctor can prescribe marijuana in Nevada).
Well then, just who is this sympathetic doctor, anyway?
For fear of harming the doctor's reputation, Werner and Barnett won't reveal any details, other than this one: It is a local pediatrician.
Contact reporter Richard Lake at rlake@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0307.
