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If a November proposition passes, plenty of moneymakers will want in.
OAKLAND, CALIF. — Welcome to Oaksterdam, California’s newest, least orthodox tourist attraction. Welcome, possibly, to the future of a multibillion-dollar business around legal marijuana.
Spread over an eight-block area of formerly disused downtown Oakland, the self-described Oaksterdam district neighborhood includes clinics and dispensaries for medical marijuana, coffee shops catering to cannabis patient, pot-themed souvenir shops, specialist law offices and Oaksterdam University, an education center for growing and dispensing marijuana. There are Segway tours, tourists and film crews.
There is also a busy office where a mostly young and energetic staff work to pass Proposition 19, a California ballot initiative that would allow people over 21 to grow, possess and transport marijuana for personal use, subject to local regulation and taxation. They foresee a day when licit marijuana use is widespread, tax revenues reach $1.6 billion despite collapsing prices for the product, and perhaps 100,000 union jobs are created in the legal dope industry.
In Pictures: Jobs In The Legal Marijuana Industry
It is difficult to say what the proposition’s chances are in the Nov. 2 vote. The ballot-betting website Intrade puts the odds at about 60-40 against, but that is on relatively small volume. In opinion polls the race is much tighter, though still against it, if a person is asking the question. In automated polls the measure passes overwhelmingly, leading organizers to conclude that the winning swing vote is people who say one thing in public, and vote another way when alone in the ballot booth.
Oaksterdam University’s founder, Richard Lee, is one of Prop 19′s original proponents. He thinks it will pass, and that legal pot will be an industry “like vintners or brewers… that’s why we started a trade school.” Oaksterdam’s classes involve issues in growing and preparing marijuana, as well as legal and business issues. Lee says 12,000 people have taken classes there over the past three years.
