on the cover / By Hank Sims

General Lee

Can Oaksterdam weed magnate Richard Lee push legalization over the top?

(July 29, 2010)  One day last month, Richard Lee was able to snatch a few minutes of freedom from the chaos of his daily life at his Oaksterdam University, the centerpiece of Oakland’s marijuana district. In the previous 15 minutes he had checked the enrollment figures for a growing workshop he was scheduled to teach that weekend, made a snap decision about some future students who said they were promised reduced tuition and had his photo taken for High Times magazine, constantly consulting with his assistant while rolling around the aisles on two floors of his flagship business.

Finally he came to rest in an upstairs conference room with windows looking out over Broadway, and there he sparked up a joint. A lanky, clean-cut Texan with nerdy wireframe glasses, technically 47 years of age, Lee has gotten around on a wheelchair since he suffered a spinal cord injury 20 years ago. It seems to have slowed him down not at all. Between puffs, he spoke in the drawl of his native state about his most ambitious political brainchild — the “Regulate, Control and Tax Cannabis Act of 2010,” also known as Proposition 19, which, if voters approve it in November, would end marijuana prohibition in the state of California.

With the Tax Cannabis initiative — Proposition 19 on the November ballot — Richard Lee (above) has pushed the marijuana legalization movement farther than weed advocates would have dared dream just a few years ago .

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Lee mused about the vocal opposition his initiative has received to date, which has come in two forms. Naturally the religious right, and associated hardcore law & order types, stand opposed to legalization. More surprisingly, though, some big-name figures in the medical marijuana movement, such as San Francisco’s Dennis Peron, stand against the measure on the grounds that government would have a role in regulating the marijuana trade. Lee couldn’t help but marvel at these erstwhile allies.

“If the narcs don’t kill me, the growers will,” he said. “Or these hippie peace and love kind of guys from the ’60s and ’70s: ‘We don’t want to be regulated and pay taxes. It should just be free for everybody to grow! Peace and love!’” Lee is not a hippie.

What are Prop. 19’s chances? Most public polls released recently show the initiative trailing somewhat. The most recent Field Poll showed the initiative barely trailing at 48-44 percent against. (The poll carried a 3.2 percent margin of error.) The leadership of the California Democratic Party decided two weeks ago to take no position on the initiative. The party’s major statewide candidates for office — Sen. Barbara Boxer and gubernatorial aspirant Jerry Brown — have actively come out against it.

On the other hand, it would be a mistake to underestimate Lee. In just a few short years he has built a massive empire around medical marijuana. He owns a coffee shop-style medical marijuana dispensary, a supply store, a nursery selling starts and, of course, the flagship Oaksterdam University, offering non-accredited classes in cultivation, politics, law, business and even marijuana cookery. (The university also has its own off-site gift shop, as well as three affiliate schools around the country — in Sebastapol, Los Angeles and Flint, Mich.)

More importantly, though, Lee is an uncommonly canny political player, at least on his own home turf in Oakland. His enterprises are now woven into the very fabric of city government. Local ballot measures he has championed have put millions in the the city treasury at a time of cutbacks and layoffs. The few blocks of downtown he has colonized are now lively, clean areas of the city that draw visitors from around the world. One of Lee’s companies prints an Oaksterdam tourism map. The medical marijuana movement has a visibility and legitimacy in Oakland unequaled anywhere else in the state, and much of that can be traced back to Lee’s savvy.

For folks who pray for legalization, and for those who fear it, the question is whether or not Lee can replicate his success at the municipal level with a statewide initiative. How for-real is he? Locally, a lot depends on the answer to that question. Black-market marijuana is a huge part of the Humboldt County economy — if the voters pass Prop. 19, we will quickly be thrown into turmoil. A recent analysis from the RAND Corporation predicted that legalization would drop the price of marijuana by nearly 80 percent — more than enough to put most small Humboldt County growers out of business.

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