The misery of the AIDS crisis was compounded by the American government’s nearly complete negligence to fight the surging epidemic. The Reagan administration publicly laughed at the disease when reporters started asking questions in 1982 about the government’s response. A lack of federal funding delayed fighting the disease, and people continued to die, with more than 40,000 AIDS patients dying in 1995 alone.
These overlapping dynamics surrounding the epidemic — the deadly misery of the disease, the government’s inaction and the benefits of medical marijuana — swirled together in San Francisco and eventually formed into America’s new medical marijuana movement.
The emerging marijuana reform movement was led by two colorful characters: Dennis Peron, a fearless cannabis advocate willing to face off with any police or politician, and Mary Jane Rathbun, a grandmotherly figure who became an unlikely face of marijuana in America.
Rathbun was a waitress selling cannabis brownies in the Castro when the AIDS crisis hit, and she soon became known as “Brownie Mary” after she started distributing thousands of weed brownies to AIDS patients around the city. Rathbun’s flagrant distribution of pot made her a target for the authorities and she was arrested multiple times, yet she refused to give in.
David Goldman, Koehn’s husband today, was living on Noe Street in the 1980s, working as a teacher and an advocate for AIDS patients, and remembers Rathbun as a “salty” woman when it came to the authorities. He recently told SFGATE that he remembers her saying that “if those narcs think they’re going to take away the medicine from my kids … they can go f—k themselves in Macy’s window.”
Rathbun’s multiple arrests made a picture-perfect image for the ridiculousness of the existing marijuana laws, with a woman who looks like a grandmother being arrested for giving medicine to patients who were suffering from a terrible disease.
While Rathbun hit the streets distributing brownies across San Francisco, Peron worked inside San Francisco City Hall and the state Legislature to change the actual laws. Peron had been selling cannabis in San Francisco since the 1970s, but his work took on a new importance when the AIDS crisis hit in the 1980s and his own partner, Jonathan West, was diagnosed with the disease.
The police raided Peron’s house in 1990 and arrested him for possession. Peron’s partner, who at this point was weeks away from dying, took the stand saying the pot was for his own use. The court eventually freed Peron.