Oakland is a terrible wreck of a city. Terrible violence. Gang infestation. Not enough cops. Awful political leadership. A disgraceful school system in which widespread malfeasance borders on misfeasance in education, often cheating students out of their futures. I used to live there and let me tell you, Oakland is a tragedy. It has great weather. A perfect location right across the bay from San Francisco. Beautiful hillside parks and a splendid waterfront. It coulda shoulda been a contender!
Alas, rather than promote responsible governance and citizenship, which is hard work requiring discipline and actual leadership, the City Fathers and Mothers Adolescents instead slouched toward making drug use easier by allowing a medical recreational pot industry. It licensed industrial marijuana farming operations—there aren’t enough sick people in the Bay Area to require all the pot grown in Oakland—and even smiled benignly on “Oaksterdam University,” a school located on the downtown’s main drag teaching students how to be federal felons by cultivating marijuana. The Feds were not amused and have raided the joint. From the NBC Bay Area story:
Oaksterdam is considered by many as the heart of California’s pot legalization movement. Officials on the scene were not commenting on their purpose other than to say that it was part of “an ongoing investigation.” Internal Revenue Service spokeswoman Arlette Lee said that the investigation was under seal in a Northern District Court.
Oaksterdam is a cannabis college that has been in business since 2007. It was founded by Richard Lee, who was the main backer of the California ballot measure defeated in 2010 that would have legalized marijuana in the state for recreational use.The Oaksterdam website says it “provides students with the highest quality training for the cannabis industry. Our faculty is comprised of the most recognized names in the California cannabis legalization movement.”
We always hear pot promoters talking about the sick and their medicine. But the sick were—and are being—used by recreational drug advocates to promote use as an intoxicant, and in some cases, to enrich themselves. Besides, Oakland hardly needs more pot smokers.
Marijuana has medicinal properties. The Controlled Substances Act needs to be amended to permit its properties to be dispensed professionally just as drugs like morphine are. Drug colleges are hardly the way for us to get from here to there. In fact, it just provides the excuse for stubborn federal non-leadership on bringing the medical palliative and other medicinal benefits of cannabis to people who need it.
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