Cannabis activist Richard Lee, who opened two highly successful (and highly illegal) medical marijuana dispensaries in Oakland, founded Oaksterdam University, and bankrolled the recreational cannabis measure, just died at 62.
If you’ve enjoyed strolling into your local legal cannabis dispensary and buying weed, without the hassle of the old street-level pot dealer runaround, you may not realize how much you have a man named Richard Lee to thank for this privilege. Lee founded a couple of Oakland medical marijuana dispensaries before these were legal (and was raided for doing so), then established the popular Oakland cannabis trade school Oaksterdam, and largely bankrolled the 2010 Prop 19 recreational marijuana ballot initiative with the millions he made selling the sticky-icky.
That 2010 measure was unsuccessful, but it directly led to Washington and Colorado legalization measures two years later, and then the successful 2016 California recreational cannabis ballot measure. For his contributions to paving the path to legalization, Richard Lee was dubbed “the Johnny Appleseed of Pot” by NPR…