Richard Lee, considered the leader who sparked the wave of global cannabis legalization in the 2010s, passed away in Houston, Texas, on Sunday, July 27. He was 62 years old.
Lee is best known as the founder of the world’s first cannabis training school, Oaksterdam University, and for financing and spearheading California’s Proposition 19 in 2010, the first attempt to legalize cannabis for all adults over 21 in the modern era. Although the ballot measure failed by a slim margin, the election led to successful initiatives in 2012 in Colorado and Washington, setting off a wave of legislative change throughout the United States and the rest of the world. In California, it forced the passage of Senate Bill 1449, which decriminalized cannabis statewide and reduced possession arrests by 89% by the following year.
Richard Lee was born in Houston on October 7, 1962. At a young age, he became interested in the music industry and worked at concert venues and with several bands in his 20s. In 1990, at the age of 28, he suffered a workplace injury, falling while working high up on lighting as a roadie for Aerosmith, which left him paraplegic and wheelchair-bound. The incident also caused chronic severe nerve pain, for which he turned to cannabis. Born the fourth of five boys, he helped convert his conservative Christian parents to his way of thinking that cannabis is medicinal, and a safer, natural alternative to prescription pain medications.
In 1992, Richard co-founded Legal Marijuana -The Hemp Store in Houston, one of the first hemp product retail outlets in the United States. Richard’s educational work reached many young activists, including Jeff Jones. They connected, and eventually Richard was growing and mailing cannabis he grew from Texas to Oakland for Jeff to distribute through the Oakland Cannabis Buyers’ Club (OCBC), one of the earliest medical cannabis dispensaries in California.
In 1997, Jeff and the OCBC founders talked Richard into moving to Oakland to provide the medicinal cannabis he grew locally. Lee co-founded the Hemp Research Company, supplying cannabis to the OCBC and researching efficient and environmentally-friendly cannabis horticulture methods. They established several grow operations around Oakland to serve patients at low or no cost. Richard Lee and Jeff Jones reshaped downtown Oakland into what became known as “Oaksterdam,” the nation’s ground-zero for the cannabis industry and legalization movement through various above-board businesses on Broadway, Oakland’s main downtown thoroughfare.
Their efforts attracted visitors interested in legalizing cannabis worldwide. Richard began dispensing to the public from The Bulldog Coffeeshop in 1999, after the Clinton Administration stopped the OCBC through a federal case that escalated to the Supreme Court.
In December 1999, Lee opened the Bulldog Coffeeshop, a cannabis dispensary and coffee shop modeled after Amsterdam cafes. In 2003, he opened Coffeeshop Blue Sky and founded the Oakland Civil Liberties Alliance, the PAC that passed Oakland’s Measure Z. Measure Z made private sales, cultivation, and possession of cannabis the lowest law enforcement priority and mandated that Oakland tax and regulate cannabis as soon as possible under state law. From 2005 to 2007, Lee published the Oaksterdam News, a quarterly newspaper with a circulation of over 100,000. Lee’s focus on legalization included touting the economic benefits. Lee played a vital role in Oakland’s revitalization and economic growth, including substantial support for renovating the historic Fox Theater.
In 2007, Lee founded the first cannabis college in the United States, Oaksterdam University, now with over 100,000 alumni from 116 countries. Oaksterdam became the focus of extraordinary media coverage that fueled profits at his businesses, which he used to fund the signature gathering efforts for the first statewide legalization campaign of the modern era, California’s Proposition 19 in 2010.
His bold political actions led to a crippling federal raid on the campus and his Oakland home on April 2, 2012. Although no charges were ever pressed against him, the motivation for the raid likely came from Lee’s outspoken activism and public statements that he had used profits from his cannabis business to fund his political actions. Lee was forcibly retired from Oaksterdam, which continues to provide cannabis education and training for regulators, professionals, and workforce development.
After retiring from Oaksterdam, Lee relocated to Houston, Texas, to be closer to his family and become primary caregiver for his mother Ann Lee, who co-founded the national organization Republicans Against Marijuana Prohibition (RAMP) with Richard’s father, Bob. RAMP was conceived in 2012 at a NORML National Convention and was created to show how conservative and pro-life values are aligned with cannabis policy reform. Richard leaves behind his beautiful mother, Ann Lee, brothers Michael, Robert “Bobby” Lee, and Donald, as well as his beloved nieces and nephews. Richard’s father, Bob Lee, and eldest brother James “Jim” Lee preceded him in death.