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Steve DeAngelo | |
|---|---|
| Born | June 12, 1958 |
| Alma mater | University of Maryland |
| Occupation | Cannabis rights advocate |
| Website | stevedeangelo |
Steve DeAngelo (born June 12, 1958) is an American cannabis rights activist and advocate for cannabis reform in the United States.
Steve DeAngelo is a co-founder and chairman emeritus of Harborside Inc., a publicly-traded cannabis company listed on the Canadian Securities Exchange. Harborside has a monopolized supply chain with dispensary locations in Oakland, San Jose, San Leandro and Desert Hot Spring. The latter has the distinction of being the second dispensary in California to feature a drive-thru. Harborside Health Center was founded in 2006 as a non-profit medical cannabis dispensary and had more than 300,000 registered medical patients. In 2016, the company rebranded as Harborside Inc. in preparation for the new legal adult-use market in California.
DeAngelo is also co-founder of Steep Hill, Inc., the first commercial cannabis lab in the country, and co-founder of Arcview Group, the first cannabis investment firm. DeAngelo formerly served Arcview as vice president.
DeAngelo is the author of The Cannabis Manifesto: A New Paradigm for Wellness.
In 2019, Last Prisoner Project was founded by Steve DeAngelo, Dean Raise, and Andrew DeAngelo. The main idea behind this project is that no one should go to jail for minor cannabis-related crimes. The project brings together people who have been affected by the criminal justice system, along with experts in policy and education, and leaders in drug policy reform to put an end to the unfairness of America's policy on cannabis prohibition.
Early on as an activist, DeAngelo skipped school to attend anti-war demonstrations and eventually dropped out to join the Youth International Party, also known as the Yippies. He went on to become the lead organizer of the annual Fourth of July Smoke-In in D.C., carrying the position for a decade. DeAngelo graduated summa cum laude from the University of Maryland. He also opened a D.C. counter-cultural gathering place that became known as a refuge for local cannabis and peace activists during the Reagan-Bush era, including William Kunstler, Wavy Gravy, and author Jack Herer.
DeAngelo helped Jack Herer edit and publish the manuscript for his book, “The Emperor Wears No Clothes,” and became a lead organizer of the first Hemp Museum and Hemp Tour. He created his first cannabis business, Ecolution; the company was one of the first to ride an industrial hemp boom, manufacturing hemp clothing and accessories for retail sales in 50 states and 21 countries during the ’90s.
Rob Kampia is an American activist who is the co-founder of the Marijuana Policy Project (MPP), co-founder of Decriminalize Sex Work (DSW), and founder of the Marijuana Leadership Campaign.
Steven Wynn "Steve" Kubby was a Libertarian Party activist who played a key role in the drafting and passage of California Proposition 215. The proposition was a ballot initiative to legalize medical marijuana which was approved by voters in 1996. Kubby was known as a cancer patient who relied on medical cannabis. He authored two books on drug policy reform: The Politics of Consciousness (1995) and Why Marijuana Should Be Legal (2003). He was the Libertarian Party of California candidate for Governor of California in 1998 receiving 0.9% of the vote. In 2008, he declared his candidacy for the Libertarian Party's 2008 presidential nomination and received significant support for the nomination, but was eliminated after the second ballot. Although various media reports have described him as a "felon" and "fugitive", Kubby's legal status was resolved on July 3, 2008, when California Superior Court Judge, David Nelson, dismissed all charges against Kubby, clearing his name and record of any criminal activity.
Oaksterdam is a cultural district on the north end of Downtown Oakland, California, where medical cannabis is available for purchase in cafés, clubs, and patient dispensaries. Oaksterdam is located between downtown proper, the Lakeside, and the financial district. It is roughly bordered by 14th Street on the southwest, Harrison Street on the southeast, 19th Street on the northeast, and Telegraph Avenue on the northwest. The name is a portmanteau of "Oakland" and "Amsterdam," due to the Dutch city's cannabis coffee shops and the drug policy of the Netherlands.
Dennis Robert Peron was an American activist and businessman who became a leader in the movement for the legalization of cannabis throughout the 1990s. He influenced many in California and thus changed the political debate on marijuana in the United States.
In the United States, increased restrictions and labeling of cannabis as a poison began in many states from 1906 onward, and outright prohibitions began in the 1920s. By the mid-1930s cannabis was regulated as a drug in every state, including 35 states that adopted the Uniform State Narcotic Drug Act. The first national regulation was the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937.
Cannabis in Oregon is legal for both medical and recreational use. In recent decades, the U.S. state of Oregon has had a number of legislative, legal, and cultural events surrounding use of cannabis. Oregon was the first state to decriminalize the possession of small amounts of cannabis, and among the first to authorize its use for medical purposes. An attempt to recriminalize possession of small amounts of cannabis was turned down by Oregon voters in 1997.
Oaksterdam University is self-recognized as the world's first cannabis college. Located in Oakland, CA, the educational facility was founded in November 2007 by medical marijuana activist Richard Lee to offer quality training for the cannabis industry, with a mission to "legitimize the business and work to change the law to make cannabis legal." Its main campus was formerly located in Downtown Oakland, Calif. On March 8, 2020, fire damaged the Oaksterdam campus at which time the brick and mortar location closed. Classes are currently held online only, both asynchronous and in real time. The university has graduated nearly 50,000 students from more than 40 countries.
Cannabis in California has been legal for medical use since 1996, and for recreational use since late 2016. The state of California has been at the forefront of efforts to liberalize cannabis laws in the United States, beginning in 1972 with the nation's first ballot initiative attempting to legalize cannabis. Although it was unsuccessful, California would later become the first state to legalize medical cannabis through the Compassionate Use Act of 1996, which passed with 56% voter approval. In November 2016, California voters approved the Adult Use of Marijuana Act with 57% of the vote, which legalized the recreational use of cannabis.
The High TimesMedical Cannabis Cup is an annual event celebrating medical marijuana. The first Medical Cannabis Cup took place in San Francisco, California, on June 19–20, 2010.
Weed Wars is an American reality-documentary television series that documents a popular medical marijuana dispensary, Harborside Health Center, in Oakland, California. The series premiered on the Discovery Channel on December 1, 2011. The series has since been cancelled.
Adam Eidinger is a Washington D.C. businessman and cannabis rights activist, known for his role in spearheading Initiative 71, which legalized cannabis in the District of Columbia in 2015.
Chris Conrad is an American author, activist, curator, publisher and court-recognized expert in cannabis cultivation and use. He has played a key role in the shaping of the modern industrial and medical cannabis reform movements as the author of such seminal books as Hemp: Lifeline to the Future (1993) and Hemp for Health (1997), as well as through his activist work as the co-founder and first President of the Hemp Industries Association (HIA), founder of the Business Alliance in Commerce and Hemp (BACH), and a signature gathering coordinator for the Proposition 215 volunteer effort which made California the first US state to legalize the medical use of cannabis. The December, 1999 issue of High Times ranked Conrad #10 on its list of top 25 "living legends in the battle for legal cannabis."
Cannabis dispensaries in the United States or marijuana dispensaries are a type of cannabis retail outlet, local government-regulated physical location, typically inside a retail storefront or office building, in which a person can purchase cannabis and cannabis-related items for medical or recreational use.
Harborside, formerly Harborside Health Center, is a recreational and medical cannabis dispensary, with its flagship location in Oakland, California, and an additional location in San Jose. Founded in 2006 by Steve DeAngelo, Harborside operates as a non-profit patient collective. In December 2011, Harborside Health Center was featured in the Discovery Channel's four-part documentary series, Weed Wars. In June 2013 CNN premiered "Inside Man", an 8-episode documentary hosted and produced by Morgan Spurlock. The show's first episode provided a detailed, inside look at California's medical marijuana industry and featured Spurlock working in Harborside Health Center, as well as it described the legal troubles of the center.
Dan Rush is an American former union organizer and former statewide political and special operations director of the United Food and Commercial Workers for cannabis and hemp workers. He was known for being a leader in the United States Labor movement in politics and for cannabis and hemp industry workers, and a civil and motorcycle rights activist. Rush began his career in the union in the 1980s as a senior official responsible for carrying out statewide ballot industry politics and eventually founded the concept of organizing medical cannabis and hemp workers in the United States and Canada. He was later investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation for enriching himself at the expense of his union in 2015, and for cheating his clients by betraying them for bribes from other cannabis industry stakeholders. He took a plea bargain in 2017, pled guilty to three charges, and served a multiyear sentence in federal prison.
A smoke-in is a protest in favor of cannabis rights or more specifically legalization of cannabis.
Women have been active in the cannabis industry, cannabis legalization, cannabis testing, and cannabis rights since the earliest days of commercialization, but they have also faced gendered obstacles impeding their growth in an industry worth over 12 million dollars since 2019. "The American cannabis industry accounted for $10 billion of 2018’s [global] figures, with the average U.S. dispensary pulling in $3 million a year."
The COVID-19 pandemic had a significant impact on the cannabis industry. Investor's Business Daily said the industry was affected as "customers stock up on prescriptions and recreational customers load up on something to make the lockdown a little more mellow or a little less boring".
The Cannabis Action Network (CAN) is a former U.S. nonprofit cannabis policy reform organization, active between 1989 and 2008. The organization strove to "encourage sensible cannabis use" and advocated for "safe access for responsible adults and patients" through the "challenge the laws of the United States and the individual states prohibiting the possession and distribution of marijuana".
