If you’re looking for a way to celebrate Pride and cannabis this summer that is meaningful and educational, look no further than the new documentary Cannabis Buyers Club, which is making its debut via ComingSoon at the Tribeca Film Festival. The film looks at the contributions of some of America’s most prolific queer cannabis advocate work.
“Cannabis Buyers Club chronicles the most important unknown LGBTQ+ rights struggle of the 20th century,” says the synopsis. “When a new disease ravages his community and the government doesn’t care, renegade pot dealer Dennis Peron leads a movement to help, heal, and fight back. Peron, a gay Vietnam vet, builds a pot empire in the middle of the War on Drugs and fights politicians and police to save his friends. The definitive story of marijuana legalization in America.”
The trailer starts with a look at when Harvey Milk first got elected, celebrating the brief queer reign of the legendary politician before his untimely murder, and activist Dennis Peron’s feelings on the election.
Told through interview style and interspersed with old photos and footage, the movie uses a documentary style to tell the story of these activists and advocates and what they did to fight for the plant during some of its darkest days.
During the overlap of the AIDS crisis and the war on drugs in the ‘70s and ‘80s, cannabis and queer lifestyles were equally vilified. AIDS was still assumed to be an aggressive disease that could be communicated just through basic contact, and weed was still assumed to be a dangerous gateway drug that caused violence in communities.
Peron saw how much cannabis could help those who were sick or dying of AIDS, and those who were sick in general, and dedicated his life’s work to providing medicine to those in need, even at the risk of being raided and arrested. He also fought hard in the battle to legalize medical and recreational cannabis.
“This is how we ran our senate bill, door to door, tear by tear,” his friend and colleague Lynette Shaw explained in an interview with OFM about his work. “We would all smoke a bunch of pot before we went into the state capitol; then we’d go into the capitol to make the senators cry. Dennis called this ‘the unfortunate dog and pony show.
“One of the things we all shared is compassion, and that was what guided us. Dennis, of course, was affected by the AIDS crisis,” adds former activist and friend Wayne Justmann. “[…] We found out that the plant cannabis was necessary to take the chances that we took to educate society. It should be made available for those that want to use it, and that’s exactly what we’ve done and what we continue to do.
Peron passed away in 2018, and in 2019, after years of effort, Governor Gavin Newsom signed SB-35, also known as The Dennis Peron and Brownie Mary Act, which supports medical cannabis compassion care programs.
This act serves to exempt compassionate care programs from state cannabis taxes, helping the saame programs that have operated legally in the state for decades, and even longer in a gray legal area for some. In most cases, the care providers sell their medicine for little or no money and are focused on patient support.
The film was created and produced by Kip Andersen and Chris O’Connell and written by O’Connell. To check out screenings if you are in the L.A. area, you can catch it on Monday June 13 at Village East By Angelika or Thursday, June 16 at Cineopolis: Theater 4. More information can be found here.
