Former Oakland pot dispensary raided by federal agents

Federal agents moved in Monday to search the former location of an Oakland medical marijuana dispensary run by Richard Lee, whose pot trade school and other properties were raided earlier in the day.

The former dispensary, called Coffeeshop Blue Sky, is now being rented by a woman trying to start a vegan bakery, said Dale Sky Jones, executive chancellor of Oaksterdam University, the state's first medical marijuana trade school.

As demonstrators chanted outside the coffeeshop, a window shattered. Protesters said the impact came from inside the storefront.

PHOTOS: Feds raid medical cannabis school in Oakland

Meanwhile, attorney Jim Wheaton, who was hired by Lee two years ago to draft Proposition 19, a marijuana legalization measure, called the raid an "appalling policy. We expected better from Obama."

Oaksterdam leaders, he said, have been "scrupulous about following the laws, building a business, teaching people to be safe and helping to rebuild Oakland."

A former Oaksterdam student, Will, 22, of Concord, who asked that his last name not be used because federal agents have seized student records, said he and his girlfriend took a class three weeks ago on vegan growing techniques and "everything seemed as normal as usual."

The class has helped the couple, patients who serve as caregivers for three others, cultivate without using animal byproducts. The plants used in class are for specific patients and legal under state law, he said, but they appear to have all been seized Monday.

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— Lee Romney in Oakland

Photo: Agents from the DEA and the IRS-CID load an alleged bag of cannabis from the Oaksterdam gift shop during an early morning multi-agency raid in Oakland. Credit: Peter DaSilva / EPA