Learn the Cannabis Industry from the People Who Helped Build It: SSDP + Oaksterdam University
Long before legal cannabis became a multibillion-dollar industry, Oaksterdam University was training the people who would build it — and helping create the movement that made it possible.
For years, Students for Sensible Drug Policy and Oaksterdam University have shared more than overlapping communities. Our histories are intertwined with the movement that transformed cannabis legalization from a seemingly radical idea into political reality.
Today, SSDPers and supporters can continue to access Oaksterdam’s cannabis education while supporting SSDP’s work at the same time: use code SSDP10 for 10% off all Oaksterdam purchases, and when you register through SSDP’s affiliate link, a portion of your purchase supports SSDP.
Before There Was a Legal Cannabis Industry
Founded in Oakland in 2007, Oaksterdam University emerged during an era when cannabis remained illegal for adult use everywhere in the United States.
Its premise was both practical and, for its time, radical: if cannabis was going to become a legitimate, regulated industry, people needed legitimate education about the plant, cultivation, business, law, patients, and responsible cannabis practices.
Oaksterdam began providing that education before most traditional institutions were willing to touch the subject.
But Oaksterdam’s importance to cannabis history extends far beyond the classroom. It became part of the infrastructure of the early legalization movement, bringing together patients, cultivators, entrepreneurs, advocates, and activists who believed cannabis prohibition could actually be ended.
Oaksterdam, SSDP, and Proposition 19
That history is closely connected to SSDP’s own.
Oaksterdam founder Richard Lee was the driving force behind California’s historic Proposition 19 campaign in 2010, one of the campaigns that helped move adult-use cannabis legalization into mainstream American politics.
SSDP students were deeply involved in Proposition 19, organizing young people and campuses across California and helping demonstrate the political power of a generation ready to end cannabis prohibition.
Proposition 19 didn’t win at the ballot box. But the movement it helped build did.
Just two years later, Colorado and Washington became the first states to legalize cannabis for adult use. In the years since, legalization has spread across the country, and an enormous legal industry has emerged around a plant that people were — and still are — arrested and incarcerated for possessing.
Many of the advocates, organizers, entrepreneurs, and experts who helped build that transformation came out of the same movement in which Oaksterdam and SSDP took root.
Cannabis Education Still Matters
The world looks very different from the one Oaksterdam entered in 2007. But the need for serious cannabis education hasn’t disappeared.
If anything, legalization has made it more important.
Working responsibly with cannabis requires understanding much more than how to grow a plant or open a dispensary. It can mean navigating cultivation, science, business, law, compliance, patients, consumers, public policy, and a regulatory environment that continues to evolve.
For SSDP, education is also inseparable from our broader mission. People deserve honest, evidence-based information about drugs, and people who choose to work with cannabis should have opportunities to develop real expertise.
We also believe the people entering today’s cannabis industry should understand how that industry became possible.
Legal cannabis didn’t simply appear when lawmakers decided the time was right. It exists because generations of patients, advocates, civil-disobedience activists, students, lawyers, researchers, entrepreneurs, and people directly harmed by prohibition fought to change the law.
Oaksterdam is unusual among cannabis educational institutions because it was there while that history was being made.
Learn Something. Support the Movement.
SSDP supporters can receive 10% off all Oaksterdam University purchases with code SSDP10.
When you register through SSDP’s Oaksterdam affiliate link, SSDP also receives a portion of the purchase at no additional cost to you. Those funds help support our work educating and organizing young people, advocating for sensible drug policies, and building the movement to end the War on Drugs.
Explore Oaksterdam through SSDP.
Whether you’re considering a career in cannabis, already working in the industry, interested in advocacy, or simply want to understand the plant and the policies surrounding it more deeply, Oaksterdam offers something particularly valuable: cannabis education from an institution with roots in the movement itself.
And that history matters because the work isn’t finished.
People are still arrested for cannabis. People remain incarcerated for conduct that is now legal and profitable elsewhere. Federal prohibition continues, and too many people who bore the costs of prohibition have been excluded from the opportunities legalization created.
The legal cannabis industry exists because people fought to end prohibition. Its future should remain connected to that movement.
