Known as “the King of Unlicensed Weed Dispensaries,” Jonathan Elfand of Empire Cannabis Clubs is a legacy player with over 30 years’ experience in cannabis, a New York native who has done plant-based business in multiple states. In 1998, Elfand and his father were busted for large-scale cultivation and distribution in NYC, while sister Lenore would take over as family caregiver with her mother while the men in her life sat in prison. But when New York legalization coincided with Jonathan’s most recent reentry, he convinced the family to take a chance on the new economy.
Watch highlights from Honeysuckle's interview with Jonathan and Lenore Elfand:
Who Are Jonathan And Lenore Elfand, Founders Of Empire Cannabis Clubs?
Empire operates multiple membership locations across New York City, thanks to a legal loophole Jonathan identified in the MRTA (the state’s Cannabis Law) or, as he says, “possibly an intended safe area to help the average Joe to beat back corporate America.” The organization has become a community staple and supporter of emerging brands, and according to Forbes has made over $25 million. But in July 2023, two of its clubs were subjected to a very public raid by the State Division of Taxation and Finance which saw Lenore arrested. Since then, the Elfand siblings have been more vocal than ever about advocating for the legitimacy of their business and their place at the top of New York’s cannabis food chain.
While preparing for the 420 season, during which they produced a star-studded “Bud Drop” event at Terminal 5 featuring Method Man, Redman, Styles P, Cash Cobain, and Doov, Jonathan and Lenore invited Honeysuckle for an exclusive conversation.
From smugglers’ runs to indoor grows, meet the family that built an Empire.
Jonathan And Lenore Elfand On Creating Empire Cannabis Clubs, Loopholes In New York Law, And The Reality Of "Gangster" Life
HONEYSUCKLE MAGAZINE: How do you define “gangster”?
JONATHAN ELFAND: We always call it the gangster coat - “Hey, you’ve still got your coat on?” I did ten years in the joint for growing these plants. I had about 20,000 growing around the city in the 90s, but I got caught with 6,000 in Brooklyn. And when they cracked that thing, I actually got charged with smuggling from Mexico [but] that didn’t even matter compared to the sentence you’d get for the cultivation of over 1,000 plants. It was an automatic sentence, 10 years mandatory minimum, no bail. So the answer is, “Someone who don't mind buttoning up their coat and risking the storm to whatever the outcome and accepting it with a smile.”
LENORE ELFAND: All the men in my family were in prison for growing plants. My dad and my brother were bunkies at Otisville. I raised my brother’s children and took care of my mother, so we were all part of it in that way. But I joined the fight in 2021 when it became legal in New York.
Not everybody wakes up and decides to walk extremely close to the edge all day long, yet you seem only comfortable there. Where does that come from?
Jonathan and Lenore Elfand in their cultivation area (C) Honeysuckle Media, Inc.
JONATHAN: My dad was a risk-taker. My cousin was involved with smuggling weed. [My former partner] smuggled boats from Thailand into San Francisco Bay, 10,000 pounds of Thai weed. Stuff introduced to me when I was younger influenced a lot. I read [James Mills’ book Underground Empire] about smuggling… I said, “I got to try this stuff.”
When I turned 17, I took a boat and sailed it down from Melbourne, Florida to Jamaica, loaded up with 600 pounds of flower, and sailed it back. It’s the biggest rush you could ever have. That was my first major play in the industry, though I grew plants in some of the first hydro setups in a house I rented in Florida when I was 15.
Top: Jonathan and Empire Cannabis Clubs' staff members (C) Honeysuckle Media, Inc.; bottom: family photos from the Elfands' past, courtesy of Empire Cannabis Clubs.
It’s never been money to me. I like success. I like to do things differently and better than everyone else does.
When were the Empire Cannabis Clubs born and how did that come about?
LENORE: It was March 2021.
JONATHAN: I had just gotten released from [prison] and they said the MRTA was coming. Since I already did research on all new legislation the states were enacting, it was on.
LENORE: He read it multiple times, calls me up, says “Read this. I think we could do something here.” The chicken that I am, I said, “I don’t know.” We contact our attorney, Steve Zissou, who’s been a lifelong family friend. He says, “No, Jonathan, you can’t do this,” but Jonathan [insisted]. After a few weeks, Steve rolled in another attorney, Sally Butler, who happens to be his wife. Jonathan was sending her excerpts of the MRTA going, “This is what it says.” Finally, we get on a Zoom. She’s reading Black’s Law [Dictionary] word for word, and she’s like, “Jonathan, I think you’ve got it.” That’s how Empire came to be.
JONATHAN: I figured it out from the way they wrote the law. Everyone comes in and tries to copy the club thing, but “club” means nothing. In the law, a sale of cannabis in New York is selling it for compensation, AKA profit on the other side. If you’re not getting compensation on it, you’re not selling cannabis. If you’re not selling, you don’t need a medical or recreational license, because that’s the only thing you get a license for now is to sell it. So basically all our money’s come from the memberships, but you can’t make money off the weed.
LENORE: We are a not-for-profit on the cannabis, so we are allowed to include consideration, the lights, the employees, the rents, memberships and stuff like that. But there is no compensation on the actual cannabis, only on CBD, merchandise, etc.
You have another legal theory about cannabis and the 14th Amendment, right?
JONATHAN: Cannabis is still a Schedule I drug, but the 14th Amendment says that you have to be treated equally. If Planet 13 [dispensary] exists in Las Vegas, and if Harborside sold for tens of millions of dollars for distributing weed (a supposedly illicit operation when the feds tried to forfeit Harborside’s money), then either the government doesn’t know about these places, which is impossible as stated… Or they know about these places distributing thousands of pounds of marijuana and they’re letting them exist. They can’t treat you, me, or anyone else any differently.
The government doesn’t have the ability to say, “Oh, you’re licensed under state law.” The federal statutes are controlling under the supremacy clause - meaning that federal laws override state laws. Thus, it's completely illegal, but the federal government has decided to throw their hands up and let Planet 13 (the biggest distributor of cannabis in the world) exist in Las Vegas. They can’t do anything to me when they do nothing to them, because the 14th Amendment says I’ve got the same rights they’ve got. There is nothing they can do to anybody in this country concerning weed, because ten years ago they said, “Okay, we’ll let it exist.”
But you were prepared for something to happen with New York enforcement. What happened on the day of the raid?
LENORE: July 11, 2023. We got phone calls from our managers at the Chelsea and Lower East Side locations. They said that the Division of Taxation and Finance police were there and wanted to come in. We had gone over this many, many times: That they can come in if they have a warrant, because although the law says that they can enter a licensed establishment for an inspection, we choose not to sell cannabis, so administrative search doesn't cover our operations. So they were trying to use that to come into our locations, saying that they were allowed to come in for an inspection with their guns and bulletproof vests.
We told them, if they do not have a warrant, they’re not coming in. There was a standoff that lasted at least two hours. We had our attorney on the phone as well - five or six of us on the phone and one of the officers. We asked whom to contact at the State, and our attorney was in contact with the attorney for the State. That attorney was very angry and my attorney told her, “We’re not letting anyone in without a warrant.” They said that we were holding our members hostage because a few of our members were in the club and graciously agreed to sit tight since we felt we had legal standing. [The officers said], “You’re kidnapping those people.” [The members] literally had to stand up and say, “We’re good, we want to be here.”
About two and a half hours later, I go to the Lower East Side and Jonathan goes to Chelsea. My attorney had warned me [that I] might get arrested for obstruction. It was my first time being arrested. I was a little nervous. But I gave [the officer] my ID and said, “I’m one of the owners. I’m happy to let you in if you have a search warrant.” And he was like, “Arrest her.” I got arrested on obstruction of justice. They put me in a cell for like five hours. It was an interesting day.
Subsequently, I go to court 90 days later and they don’t show up, they don’t provide any discovery, case is dismissed, and I have filed a lawsuit against the State for wrongful arrest.
Jonathan, how did you successfully run so many indoor grows?
JONATHAN: The first building I did back in 1990 with a partner, a 27-storey building between Eighth and Ninth Avenues on 38th Street. We put like 400 lights in the basement, about 3000 plants growing in Rockwell slabs with two 500-gallon tanks. Everything I did was the most high tech cultivation techniques for the times and thus everything was less work per person. Except the trimming. Back then you couldn't hire trimmers, so me and my dad and other family and friends sat trimming day in, day out. Hell, my federal bust was a mixed light dep facility in Williamsburg, something no one even heard of until the 2000s up in Northern California.
LENORE: The big grow in 1990 supposedly smelled on both blocks surrounding 38th Street and everyone thought there were skunks in Manhattan.
JONATHAN: We picked it for that, because I ran exhaust all the way to the top of the 27 storeys, but even venting it out like that, the amount made it stink everywhere. We were next to a police station, and once in a while, the police would walk around and go, “Fricking skunks.” But no one had any idea. (Laughs)
The one that got busted, got busted by accident. In 1996 we had the coldest winter that New York had had in 20 years. The street froze over, because I think a pipe broke on 39th Street. Fire department comes and locks the whole street down. They go into the middle of the block and have to break into the basement. It’s a Sunday, no one’s there; they find one side black without light and couldn't find the pipes to turn off the water. They go in the other side, boom. Holy shit. Garden of Eden! They came into [our grow] with 400 lights going and the cops were walking out with plants hanging off their back. But they couldn’t bust us because in New York, the fire department is a government official, and because they entered without a warrant, they couldn’t do anything. But they busted the largest grow room in the United States.
You’ve done a lot of advocating for inmates too, right?
JONATHAN: Yeah, I got a lot of inmates home. America locks up more people than anywhere else in the world. You don’t lock somebody away for a plant that doesn’t do shit to you for 20 years.
LENORE: This is one of the things that makes me most proud of my brother. He always advocated; he would read people’s cases to see where people took pleas because they were afraid of the time. Jonathan would step in and be like, “No, this is what you need to do.” That makes me very proud because the prison system is just a big giant business. The more people they can lock up, the more money they can make on the telephones, the commissary, every single part. It’s shameful. There are people who spent 20, 30 years or more for drugs. That should never happen.
For more about Empire Cannabis Clubs, visit empirecannabisclubs.com.
*A version of this article originally appeared in Honeysuckle's 18th print edition. Click here to order and choose your element - Fire with Bun B or Ice with Queen P!
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Featured image: Empire Cannabis Clubs co-founder Jonathan Elfand at one of the club's New York City locations (C) Honeysuckle Media, Inc.
