How The Hippies Won

California’s Medical Cannabis history—Abridged

Medical cannabis patients and their allies celebrate an especially hope-filled April 20 this year: two states have legalized cannabis for adults over 21; there are now 18 compassionate states plus Washington D.C.; and nine states have pending MMJ bills in their legislatures. Arrests for cannabis in California have plummeted to their lowest on record, and the tide of the Drug War appears to be receding. But how exactly we got to this point is probably unknown to most 420 revelers, experts say.

“We forget our history,” Proposition 215 founder Dennis Peron says. “And when you don’t know, you might repeat it somehow.”

Broadly speaking, California upended a century-old international drug control order with Proposition 215 in 1996, followed by SB 420 in 2003, as well as a string of hard-fought victories in court from 1996 until today.

California has always been a land of firsts—first banning cannabis in 1913 before the United States followed suit in 1937. In 1971 President Nixon declared an all-out War on Drugs, while in the Bay Area the Hippie movement preached peace, love and mind expansion.

Peron got a taste of the Summer of Love while shipping out to Vietnam. Drafted by the Army, he had joined the Air Force and survived the Tet Offensive in Saigon. Refusing to kill Vietnamese, Peron was assigned morgue duty for a month. “I’m 20 years old, I’ve never seen a dead person. That month I saw 25,000 dead people. I came out of my closet and found out who I was,” Peron said.

Peron returned to San Francisco to the nascent gay community in The Castro and that community grew during Reagan’s “Just Say No” ’80s as the Hippies became Bay Area establishment. When AIDS began ravaging The Castro, the counter-culture’s old friend cannabis lifted spirits and slowed wasting due to AIDS. Nurse “Brownie” Mary Jane Rathburn became a global cause célèbre—getting repeatedly arrested for delivering medical cannabis—sometimes in the form of infused brownies, hence the nickname—to AIDS patients.

“She let people know providers weren’t crazies running through the streets selling drugs; they were grandmothers, nurses, family members, and caregivers,” said Debby Goldsberry, founder of the Cannabis Action Network.

In 1991, Peron pushed San Francisco to pass Proposition P, a symbolic legalization of medical cannabis that other California cities copied. Peron opened the San Francisco Cannabis Buyer’s Collective and got raided and jailed for it. The California legislature passed two MMJ bills, only to see Gov. Pete Wilson veto both of them. When Peron lost his lover, Jonathan West, to AIDS, he dedicated the historic initiative to him.

“I did it all for him. I loved that guy. He died so fast. We were going to be together forever. I missed him so much. Dedicating Prop 215 to him gave me life, and gave me something to not be so miserable about and it gave me hope,” Peron says.

The Compassionate Use Act passed Nov. 5, 1996 with 55.6 percent of the vote: essentially saying that patients and caregivers have a medical defense in court against prosecution for certain crimes like possession and cultivation.

Part of Prop 215 passing was reform efforts, but part of it was a cultural change, said historian and author Martin Lee, who wrote the 2012 title Smoke Signals – A Social History of Marijuana. Reefer Madness propaganda had begun to ring hollow, and Drug War fatigue had set in, he said.

“Generally, political change happens after cultural change, not vice versa, and marijuana is a prime example of that,” Lee says.

Law enforcement opposition to Prop 215 was light, Goldsberry said, but the cops’ response to its passing was severe. The last 16 years has been an uphill battle for every inch of rights that cannabis users enjoy, Goldsberry says. In 2003, state Sen. Mark Leno’s SB 420 extended legal protections from patients and caregivers to collectives and cooperatives, giving rise to modern storefront dispensaries.

Ongoing court victories have affirmed that doctors have a First Amendment right to recommend cannabis, that patients can lawfully transport the plant, and avoid arrest with a state MMJ ID card, that seized plants must be returned to lawful patients. Dispensaries have affirmed their right to exist, and take cash payments.

In 2008, President Obama’s “Ogden Memo” was interpreted as a federal truce with medical cannabis, and California dispensaries bloomed. But by Oct. 2011 that truce was over, and federal prosecutors have shut down hundreds of access points since then. The federal crackdown continues to this day, but it’s on shakier ground than ever as two states move forward to implement full legalization.

“The hippies had an agenda in the ’60s and all of our agenda was met,” Peron says. “We wanted to end discrimination against minorities. We wanted women’s rights. All those things came to pass. But we didn’t forget about marijuana. I feel like there’s hope. For me, this is as far as we’ve ever been. I see the light at the end of the tunnel and I think it’s going to happen in my lifetime.”