Richard Lee

Oaksterdam Raid: Journalist Is Only Person Charged One Year Later

Our friends over at SFist today posted a reminder that it's been one year since federal agents -- mostly the IRS, though DEA and US Marshals were on scene -- raided the campus of Oakland marijuana grow college Oaksterdam University and the offices and apartment of its founder, cannabis legalization ... More >>

Jury Nullification Does Work -- If You're a White Rastafarian

The right thing isn't always the legal thing, as many moralists venturing inside a courtroom will discover. Mandatory minimums mean a judge must sometimes hand down a stiff sentence. The law is the law and it has left no choice, unsavory as it might have been.But there is another way, another l ... More >>

Medical Marijuana: Feds Show Little Interest in San Jose, Where Dispensaries Are Illegal

Aside from strikes at the medical marijuana industry's most vocal, visible, and influential leaders, little rhyme or reason has accompanied the federal Justice Department's crackdown on California cannabis.U.S. Attorney Melinda Haag offered no comment or explanation as her office shut down roughly o ... More >>

Obama's Oakland Visit: Marijuana Lovers Promise To Be There

President Barack Obama's reelection campaign picked office space in downtown Oakland (of which there is plenty available) to house its Bay Area headquarters. The East Bay city has put in the work, and on Monday, Oakland will receive a presidential visitor for the first time in recent memory, when Ob ... More >>

Feds Move to Close Harborside Health Center, California's Biggest Marijuana Dispensary

The federal Justice Department's crackdown on California's medical marijuana industry escalated Monday when the government moved to shut down the state's largest cannabis dispensary.U.S. Attorney Melinda Haag filed paperwork July 6 to seize the Oakland and San Jose locations of Harborside Health Cen ... More >>

Oaksterdam Marijuana and Hemp Museum Moving, Seeking Sponsors

For those corporations or philanthropists who always wanted to attach their names to the country's self-described most expansive and storied collection of marijuana-related artifacts, the time is now.Better yet: If you're a property owner with available commercial space in downtown Oakland, the Oaks ... More >>

California Congressmen Push Spending Cuts on Federal Marijuana Enforcement

Budget hawks incensed over San Francisco's supposedly profligate spending ought to spend a few minutes at Congress, observing the dollar requests submitted by federal departments.Take the $28.2 billion, 111,998-employee federal Department of Justice, for example. The country's 12,000 employees in Un ... More >>

Marijuana Legalization Efforts Fail in California, Thanks to The Feds

Few successful political movements count their finest hours a loss. Yet 2010 will remain the high water mark of the marijuana legalization movement for at least another two years -- or longer, if the federal situation worsens.Buoyed by Oaksterdam University founder Richard Lee's cash and energy, Pro ... More >>

Oaksterdam University Goes Volunteer-Only, Future Uncertain

The federal Justice Department does not yet have Richard Lee's head. But in the wake of a multi-agency raid on Oaksterdam University, they have his business.The "cannabis college," Oakland's best known institution of higher learning -- sorry, Mills, but you don't teach people to grow weed -- is now ... More >>

Medical Marijuana Dispensaries Stay Open Despite Federal Deadline

On the day the federal government wished HopeNet to close, the operators of San Francisco's oldest licensed and taxpaying medical marijuana dispensary prepared accordingly: They grilled hot dogs."We made about 220," said Catherine Smith, whose Ninth Street medical cannabis dispensary is one of the n ... More >>

Richard Lee, Oaksterdam Founder, Calls it Quits After Federal Raid

Less than a week after federal agents raided Oaksterdam University, seizing many of its assets, including plants, bank accounts, records and computers, its founder, Richard Lee, has decided it's time to go. Lee, the most visible pot legalization advocate in the state, told the Los Angeles Times that ... More >>

Oaksterdam University Pledges to Re-open After Federal Raid on Marijuana Leader

What many saw as the inevitable hit Oaksterdam founder Richard Lee on Monday, when federal agents came knocking at the home and businesses of the man who has become the marijuana movement's de-facto figurehead.After Lee revived a moribund part of downtown Oakland with a school dedicated to the pot t ... More >>

Oaksterdam University Raided by Feds (Video)

​Medical marijuana activists are gathered around Oaksterdam University in downtown Oakland as federal authorities raid the state's first-ever cannabis training facility. Officials with the Drug Enforcement Agency, walking in and out of the school at 16th and Broadway, would not talk to the press. ... More >>

Lost Boys of Summer: Some Ex-Ballplayers Seek Help From MLB

Wait Until 2014: Marijuana Legalization All But Dead in California

​Union Pulls Plug on Medical Reform, Other Ballot Measures Starved For Cash; Legislature, Ammiano Last Hope for Reform NowNobody likes to celebrate with a loss, but for the medical marijuana movement, 2010 and the historic defeat of semi-legalization measure Proposition 19 already look like the go ... More >>

Nothing's Free: S.F. DPH Cracks Down on Foraged Dinners

City Declares OccupySF A Public Health Hazard, Poop, Piss, and Vomit Sully the Plaza

Residents of Justin Herman Plaza​A city health official declared the OccupySF encampment in Justin Herman Plaza an "imminent public health hazard" Tuesday after observing that the site has become a porta potti for protesters, filled with poop, piss, and vomit. Department of Public Health offi ... More >>

Oaksterdam's Richard Lee: Marijuana Legalization Is "Dead" in California -- For Now

Richard Lee says it's all over -- for now​Last year's Proposition 19 was quite a wild ride, but marijuana legalization in California is over.  That's according to Richard Lee, the Oaksterdam University founder and chief sponsor of Prop. 19, which won its place on Californians' November 2010 b ... More >>

Pot Legalization Measure Has Support of Mendocino Growers

Drug Policy AllianceThat's the idea​Can Protections for Medical Patients Help Succeed Where Proposition 19 Failed?Cannabis advocates promised they'd be back at the California ballot following marijuana legalization measure Proposition 19's historic failure in November 2010 (the measure received mo ... More >>

Going Legit, Part 3: What's the Minimum an Underground Market Vendor Needs?

Mo Foods at the Underground Market.​Part three of a series in which SFoodie asks the question: With the Underground Market now shut down, what would it take for San Francisco's aspiring food microventures to go legit? Before SFoodie gets into the specifics of what it will take to sell your prod ... More >>

Going Legit, Part 2: Finding a Commercial Kitchen

Albert LawSaucy Dumplings at the April 2011 Underground Market.​Part two of a series in which SFoodie asked the question: With the Underground Market now shut down, what would it take for San Francisco's aspiring food microventures to go legit?When I asked Richard Lee, director of the city's Envir ... More >>

Underground Market Remains Closed; ForageSF to Make Case to City Attorney

slowpoke_sf/FlickrThe underground market​Health inspectors are holding the line on their decision to shut down the popular ForageSF underground food market, insisting in a meeting yesterday with ForageSF founder Iso Rabins that vendors obtain necessary licenses before the market can reopen.Rabins ... More >>

Underground Market Remains Closed; ForageSF to Make Case to City Attorney

slowpoke_sf/FlickrThe underground market​Health inspectors are holding the line on their decision to shut down the popular ForageSF underground food market, insisting in a meeting yesterday with ForageSF founder Iso Rabins that vendors obtain necessary licenses before the market can reopen.Rabins ... More >>

Ammiano's Cannabis Bill a 'Rumor' -- For Now

Buzz kill​You know the old saying: Where there's Tom Ammiano, there's cannabis. California's most cannabis-friendly assemblyman is being connected with an "omnibus cannabis bill" meant to reform, regulate, and clarify the many gray areas in California's medical marijuana laws. Aside from that, som ... More >>

Oaksterdam's Richard Lee Attends Daly Roast, Treated to Wheelchair Joke

No Joke​Aside from his fleeting visibility in the media during his push to legalize marijuana with Proposition 19, Oaksterdam University's Richard Lee is a loner. Lee is known for keeping a low profile -- both in Oakland and with the media --  so much so that he was described as a ... More >>

Marijuana Roundup: The Year In Pot

​How was your 2010? For the cannabis community, it was a wild flip of the calendar, with dispensaries opening and closing, police raiding, a medical cannabis luminary thrown in jail for meth charges -- and we vaguely remember something about a legalization ballot measure. There's still time y ... More >>

Prop. 19 Smoked -- Marijuana Supporters Promise New Legalization Effort

Wait 'til next year...​As the national media will gladly tell you, people are smoking weed in San Francisco. People -- with and without medical marijuana recommendations -- smoked weed yesterday and they'll do so today, and they were going to do so no matter what happened with Proposition 19, the ... More >>

Prop. 19 Backer Richard Lee Not Ready to Count Out Pot Legalization

​Say what you will, Richard Lee is no Joe Namath. The New York Jets quarterback, against all odds, guaranteed a Super Bowl victory. Lee, the pot entrepreneur behind Oaksterdam University -- and the driving fiscal force behind Proposition 19 -- was decidedly noncommittal when queried about electora ... More >>

End Prohibition?

Napster's Sean Parker Showers $100K on Marijuana Measure

RamaScreenNapster's Sean Parker -- yes, the guy played by Justin Timberlake in The Social Network -- put his pot money where his mouth is​The e-mail came Monday from Oaksterdam University's Richard Lee, the main driving force (at least publicly) behind cannabis semi-legalization measure Propos ... More >>

Pot Baron Steve DeAngelo Calls For More Compassion in World of Corporate Marijuana

Harborside Health CenterSteve DeAngelo says greed, for lack of a better word, is not good​Steve DeAngelo cares. The owner of Oakland's Harborside Health Center -- the largest medical cannabis dispensary in the United States, with some 60,000 patients and counting -- wants to "flip the switch" ... More >>

Do Black Voters Want to Legalize Marijuana?

​As the campaigns for and against California's marijuana-legalizing Proposition 19 heat up, a big question mark still hangs over a vital factor in the initiative's fate: How popular is it among minorities, and specifically among black voters?Notes prince-among-pollsters Nate Silver on FiveThirtyEi ... More >>

California Democrats Stay Neutral on Marijuana-Legalizing Prop. 19

Drag​Supporters of Proposition 19 -- the Control and Tax Marijuana 2010 initiative -- can be forgiven for feeling a little paranoid these days. After the move to regulate marijuana like alcohol was lambasted by state politicians ranging from Sen. Dianne Feinstein to Mayor Gavin Newsom to Kamala Ha ... More >>

Legalization Measure 'Bad for Patients,' S.F. Cannabis Dealer Says

Cookie, NOOOOOOOOO!​Legalization threat "putting us in the shadows ... making us dirty again," says head of Green Cross Cannabis DeliveryA couple of years ago Kevin Reed, 36, president of Bay Area Green Cross medical marijuana delivery service, had his mother over. She tried a cookie. This was no ... More >>

High Times at International Pot Expo

Chris RobertsHardcore pot enthusiasts probably didn't even notice the woman in the background of this photo. Right?​VIEW OUR POT EXPO SLIDESHOW HERE California is pot-friendly, but public mass consumption of cannabis is still a feat -- especially when it's on state property. That is partiall ... More >>

How Do Pot Advocates Celebrate Huge Victory? Use Your Imagination.

Neil in Space - Click here for more blooper videosYesterday, we reported that an initiative to tax and regulate marijuana was all but certain to grace the November ballot. Well, guess what? Pro-pot voters, come November, you're hooked up. Needing 433,971 signatures to make the ballot, the initiativ ... More >>

Puff, Puff, Pass: Ammiano's Pot Bill Clears Assembly Committee

​Assemblyman Tom Ammiano's bill to legalize -- and tax the hell out of -- marijuana scraped through the assembly's public safety committee this morning by a 4-3 vote. Today's tally was, according to Ammiano's staff, the "first formal consideration of marijuana legalization in American history." Wh ... More >>

Weed Takes Root

Marijuana's steady creep toward legalization nationwide

Hot-Food Vendors Banned from the Metreon Farmers' Market

The Metreon's Island Earth Farmer's Market (101 Fourth St. at Mission) is suddenly feeling rather chilly, and it has nothing to do with the cold front. At an abatement hearing, the Health Department has determined that the market's permit to sell food cooked on site has expired, meaning that only ve ... More >>

Chronic City: The 'Oaksterdam Model' For Legal Pot In California

Oaksterdam UniversityWith Oakland broke and growing broker (like many other American cities), calls for the city to get into the growing and selling of medical marijuana are being taken more seriously.The idea seems a lot less crazy when you take a look at the potential revenue to be generated, espe ... More >>

Chronic City: Let's Vote On It -- Marijuana Legalization May Be On 2010 Ballot

Photobucket.comTo put a new twist on an old saw, desperation is often the mother of invention. When a person, or a state, is in dire straits, it's often an opportunity for the kind of epochal change that, at other times, might not be considered.That's where we are right now with marijuana law reform ... More >>

Could Authorities Bust the Mission's Street-Food Party? Part II: The Police

jrodstein/FlickrMagic Curry Kart is a fixture of the new vendor sceneLast week we checked in with the city's director of Health Regulatory Programs to determine how aware city officials were of the Mission's exploding unlicensed street-food scene. This week we checked in with police. Early Saturday ... More >>

Could Authorities Bust the Mission's Street-Food Party?

Kevin.The.Great via FlickrCreme Brulee Guy in action in Dolores ParkThe Mission's underground street-food scene is heating up as fast as an empty wok over a cranked burner. The Chron took notice last week, and on page A1, no less. Even the LA Times travel blog was caught licking its chops. But while ... More >>