(Corrects that Justmann and Lee comments were made to Reuters,
not other protesters, paragraphs 6 and 8)
* Oaksterdam University to reopen Wednesday
* Protesters rally in front of San Francisco’s City Hall
By Ronnie Cohen
SAN FRANCISCO, April 3 (Reuters) – Medical marijuana
advocates on Tuesday vowed to reopen a San Francisco-area
college devoted to cannabis cultivation and known as the
“Princeton of Pot” a day after federal agents shut down the
school in a raid.
Hundreds of protesters rallied in front of San Francisco’s
City Hall, some on crutches and in wheelchairs and smoking
hand-rolled joints. The demonstrators carried signs that said,
“Cannabis is medicine; let states regulate” and chanting “Feds
off my meds.”
Monday’s raid on Oaksterdam University, which offers courses
on growing and dispensing of marijuana, turned the Oakland-based
school into the latest flashpoint between federal law
enforcement and medical cannabis advocates in states where pot
has been decriminalized for medicinal purposes.
Federal authorities also searched the home of veteran
medical marijuana activist and Oaksterdam founder Richard Lee,
as well as a nearby medical marijuana dispensary he runs.
Lee, confined to a wheelchair by a spinal injury, was a
leading proponent behind a failed California ballot initiative
in 2010 that would have legalized possession and cultivation of
small amounts of marijuana in the state for recreational use.
“In a wheelchair, he’s a threat,” Wayne Justmann, an adviser
for medical pot supply shops, said facetiously as he spoke to
Reuters at the rally. “He’s a guy who’s helped so many people.”
Rather than targeting Lee, Justmann added, “Go after that
guy who killed seven and injured three.” He was referring to the
former student of a private, Christian college who killed seven
people and wounded three others in a shooting rampage on Monday.
Lee himself said he worried that he might be prosecuted.
“They can indict me any day,” he said, recounting how he was
awakened by federal agents armed with assault rifles appearing
at his Oakland apartment with a search warrant. “They can arrest
me any day.” Agents briefly detained but did not arrest Lee.
The school was closed after agents searched it, but it will
reopen Wednesday, Lee’s lawyer, Laurence Jeffrey Lichter said.
Although marijuana remains classified as an illegal narcotic
under federal law, 16 states and the District of Columbia have
enacted some sort of legalized medical-cannabis statutes,
according to the Drug Policy Alliance.
In those states, including California, the U.S. government
has sought in recent months to shut down storefront dispensaries
and greenhouses deemed by federal investigators to be
drug-trafficking fronts, as well as those that are located close
to schools and parks.
The Obama administration has said it would not single out
individual patients who possess or grow their own marijuana in
states with medical pot statutes. But federal prosecutors have
warned they will continue to go after operations that support
for-profit, illegal drug dealing under the guise of medical pot.
Federal action has led to dozens of medical marijuana
dispensaries being shut down in California, but so far no one
has been charged with criminal activity in connection with the
crackdown, Lichter said.
Oaksterdam, widely referred to as the “Harvard of Hemp” and
the “Princeton of Pot,” opened in 2007 and bills itself as the
first cannabis college in the United States.
“Two universities were struck yesterday,” said Dale Sky
Jones, executive director of Oaksterdam, referring to Monday’s
raid on her school at the same time a gunman opened fire at the
nearby Oikos University. “Federal resources are wasted on failed
policy while our cities beg for help with gun violence.”
(Editing by Mary Slosson, Steve Gorman and Lisa Shumaker)
