A year ago today, Oakland’s pioneering Oaksterdam University was raided by DEA agents.
Its vocal founder, millionaire activist Richard Lee, also saw his home
raided, and subsequently he stepped down as leader of the school,
allowing ownership of it and the associate marijuana dispensary,
Coffeeshop Blue Sky, to be split among several employees. The school is
now a fraction of the size it once was, though it’s still operating, and
curiously, no charges have yet been filed against Lee or any of the people involved with Oaksterdam.
The University has now shrunk and relocated, with 15 to 20 faculty
and employees down from a high of 100 last April. And enrollment is
obviously smaller as well. The dispensary is no longer connected,
business-wise, to the University.
While Lee or others still could face federal prosecution, it seems as
though the entire raid was staged to make an example of the
high-profile center of the cannabis industry that Lee had set up, and to
show the city of Oakland that the government meant business when it
comes to meting out federal law in the face of such blatant celebrations
of semi-legal marijuana. As Oakland North
reports, U.S. Attorney Melinda Haag won’t comment on the case, and
there’s little indication of how much further the Justice Department’s
2011 statewide crackdown on the industry will go. Kris Hermes, media
specialist for Americans for Safe Access, points out that
post-crackdown, there are still well over 1,000 dispensaries operating
statewide, and the industry is still "fairly robust … [and] shows no
signs of going away."
But state laws, and the even more liberal city ordinances like
Oakland has
