As attitudes shift, marijuana classes roll
By William M. Welch

USA TODAY
February 8, 2010
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2010-02-08-marijuana-school_N.htm
Photo - http://i.usatoday.net/news/_photos/2010/02/08/potschoolx.jpg
Photo caption - Dale Sky Clare, executive chancellor of Oaksterdam
University, demonstrates lighting options with a silk marijuana plant last
month in Los Angeles.
By Stephanie Diani, for USA TODAY
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LOS ANGELES

This school doesn't have a problem with students not paying
attention.

"They're paying us to come, and our classes are full," says Jeff Jones,
chancellor of the Los Angeles branch of Oaksterdam University, where
students learn the business of marijuana from seed to ash.

Attitudes are changing as 14 states now have laws allowing some form of
legal marijuana use with a doctor's recommendation. And with legalization
comes a growing cannabis industry.

In California alone, the medical-marijuana business could be worth as much
as $2 billion, says Dale Gieringer, state coordinator for NORML, a marijuana
advocacy group. Prices vary widely, but dispensaries have advertised an
ounce of dried marijuana for $340 or more.

"Ten years ago I couldn't get a room full of people to talk about this,"
Jones says. Now, people from across the country come to learn how to legally
grow, distribute and profit with pot, even though it remains illegal under
federal law.

Oaksterdam holds classes in three California cities and is expanding out of
state. Students learn about the law and science of marijuana as well as how
to lobby local government leaders and how to tamp down the pungent,
tell-tale smell of cannabis gardens. Growers often worry about theft, and
because of legal uncertainties, there is always the risk of a raid by
authorities.

About 7,000 people have taken classes at Oaksterdam, says Executive
Chancellor Dale Sky Clare, who oversees all branches. There are waiting
lists to enroll â?" 850 students started courses this semester, and more than
300 have signed up for next semester, she said.

"It's not just hippies in tie-dye," Clare says.

Mixed group of students

Jeff Studdard, a former police officer, was among students at a recent
class. Studdard, 46, of Riverside County, said he had been a school district
police officer and a Los Angeles County auxiliary sheriff's deputy trained
to recognize drug users until a broken back forced him to retire. The pain,
even after three surgeries, prompted him to try marijuana.

"I never smoked pot as an officer," he says, but after the injury, "I know
first-hand the benefits." He was hoping to incorporate medical marijuana in
a holistic treatment business.

Kenji Klein, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California-Irvine, is
studying the emerging legal pot market as a basis for his doctoral thesis.
"It's interesting to me the way social change and entrepreneurship get
linked together," Klein said.

Many students, worried about legal uncertainties, did not want to be
identified.

"We all like to have fun in this industry, but sometimes people go to jail,"
says Sarah Diesel, an instructor.

Oaksterdam University opened in 2007 in Oakland. Its name is part Oakland,
part Amsterdam, the Dutch city known for its permissiveness toward pot.
Classes are offered in Oakland, Los Angeles and Sebastopol, north of San
Francisco. Last year, it expanded to Michigan, where voters passed a
medical-marijuana law in 2008.

On a recent weekend, 55 students in Los Angeles paid $250 each for Marijuana
101, a two-day introductory course.

They were instructed on key court decisions, how to work in a dispensary,
which varieties of cannabis are best for various ailments and how to
cultivate a good pot crop.

Oaksterdam is not the only school of its type. In Michigan, Nick Tennant,
24, opened Med Grow Cannabis College. "Our law is in its infancy," Tennant
says. "We've been doing very well. I think there's huge demand."

'People come from all over'

Oaksterdam's founder and owner, Richard Lee, is a successful medical
marijuana entrepreneur. His Coffeeshop Blue Sky is one of four dispensaries
licensed in Oakland. He recently financed most of a $1 million
signature-gathering effort for a proposal on California's ballot this fall
to fully legalize pot while establishing state and local taxation.

"It's been amazing, the response," Lee says of his school. "People come in
from all over the country."

Special Agent Casey McEnry of the federal Drug Enforcement Administration,
wouldn't comment on the cannabis school but said, "It is not the practice or
policy of DEA to target individuals with serious medical conditions who
comply with state laws."

Much of the school's teaching is devoted to helping students operate within
the law, while acknowledging that gray areas remain 14 years after
California approved the nation's first medical-marijuana law.

"If you have a grow, don't let anyone know," Diesel warns.

In a recent Los Angeles class, there were students from states with
medical-marijuana laws, such as Colorado and Nevada, and states without,
including Arizona, Florida, Minnesota and Texas.

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