Obama's War On Marijuana Rolls On

On Monday, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency and the Internal Revenue Service raided the campus of Oaksterdam University, a trade school of sorts—some call it the “Princeton of Pot”—in Oakland, Calif., that instructs students on the finer points of growing, harvesting, and selling pot. Oaksterdam was established in 2007 after the state legalized medical marijuana; it later expanded to Los Angeles and Michigan. The federal raid was the latest in a series of actions by the Justice Department to crack down on the “legal” marijuana business that’s permitted by such states as California, yet violates federal law.

I briefly attended Oaksterdam University a few years ago for this article in the The Atlantic about the growing business of medical marijuana—or “cannabusiness,” as its proprietors like to say. Although media coverage of the campus tends to indulge all the usual stoner stereotypes, Oaksterdam is at heart a business school. Somewhat to my surprise, most of my classmates were not dreadlocked trustafarians or Jeff Spicoli types, but earnest, clean-cut, night-school sorts who wouldn’t have looked a bit out of place managing an Applebee’s (DIN) franchise—a gauge of how promising the business of marijuana once looked.

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