Brownie Mary

Wikipedia:

Mary Jane Rathbun (December 22, 1922 – April 10, 1999), popularly known as Brownie Mary, was an American medical cannabis activist. Rathbun was a hospital volunteer at San Francisco General Hospital who became known for illegally baking and distributing chocolate cannabis brownies to AIDS patients. Along with Dennis Peron, Rathbun was active in efforts to legalize cannabis for medical use, and she helped pass San Francisco Proposition P (1991) and California Proposition 215 (1996) to achieve those goals. Rathbun also contributed to the establishment of the San Francisco Cannabis Buyers Club, the first medical cannabis dispensary in the United States.

Rathbun was arrested on three separate occasions, with each arrest bringing increased local, national and international media attention to the medical cannabis movement. Her grandmotherly appearance generated public sympathy for her cause and worked against attempts by the district attorney's office to prosecute her for possession. The City of San Francisco eventually gave Rathbun permission to distribute cannabis brownies to people with AIDS. Her arrests generated interest in the medical community and motivated researchers to propose one of the first clinical trials to study the effects of cannabinoids in HIV-infected adults.

Early life

Brownie Mary was born Mary Jane Rathbun in Chicago, Illinois, on December 22, 1922. She was named "Mary Jane" by her mother, a conservative Irish Catholic. "Given my background and reputation and my adopted name, my poor old mother is surely turning cartwheels in her grave", Rathbun later recalled.

Rathbun was raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where she attended Catholic school. At the age of 13, she was involved in an altercation with a nun who tried to cane her, but Rathbun fought back. As a teenager, she moved out of her home and found a job as a waitress. She became involved in social activism early in life, traveling from Chicago to Wisconsin to campaign for the rights of miners to form unions. In the late 1940s, she worked as an activist on abortion rights for women in Minneapolis.

San Francisco

During World War II, she moved to San Francisco, California, and met a man at a USO dance. They married but soon divorced. Rathbun had a daughter, Peggy, in 1955. She worked as a waitress for most of her adult life. She moved to Reno, Nevada, but after Peggy died in a car accident in the early 1970s, she moved back to San Francisco.

Rathbun first met Dennis Peron in 1974 in the Castro district at Café Flore, where they shared a cannabis cigarette together. During that time, Rathbun was working as a waitress at the International House of Pancakes. For extra money, she would sell cannabis-laced brownies; she became known in the Castro for selling "magical brownies" out of a basket for several dollars each. Peron would also sell Rathbun's brownies on Castro Street at his Big Top pot supermarket. Police raided Peron's business in 1977 and shot him in the leg.

Beginning in 1984, Brownie Mary volunteered each Thursday in the AIDS ward (Ward 86) at San Francisco General Hospital. According to Donald Abrams, "she used to wheel our patients to radiology [and] take their specimens to the lab". Ward 86 honored her with a "Volunteer of The Year" award in 1986.

In 1997, she was honored as the Grand Marshal of the San Francisco Gay Pride Parade, along with Dennis Peron.

Activism

In New York in the early 1990s, cannabis activist Dennis Peron spoke at a meeting of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT-UP) about the alleged benefits of cannabis for the relief of AIDS symptoms. Few believed or wanted to listen to him. Nevertheless, Peron persisted, and several years later he introduced the group to Rathbun. She spoke to the group about her first-hand experience distributing cannabis-laced brownies to people with AIDS. Peter Gorman reported that this time, "the reception was warmer, but still skeptical".

Rathbun helped work on Proposition P, which was passed by 79 percent of San Francisco voters on November 5, 1991. Proposition P made it the policy of the City of San Francisco to recommend that the State of California and the California Medical Association make cannabis available for medicinal purposes and to protect physicians from penalties for prescribing medicinal cannabis. In August 1992, Rathbun testified about medical cannabis in a hearing held by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. The Board passed a resolution making the arrest or prosecution of people in possession of or growing medical cannabis the "lowest priority". The Board also recognized Rathbun's volunteer work at the hospital by declaring August 25 "Brownie Mary Day".

In September 1992, Rathbun joined ACT UP/DC in Washington, D.C. for a protest against the medical cannabis policies of the U.S. government. They delivered a letter to James O. Mason, then director of the United States Public Health Service, requesting that people with AIDS receive immediate access to cannabis. In 1991, Mason had been responsible for cancelling the compassionate use program that allowed patients to use cannabis. He had also expressed controversial comments about the program, claiming, among other things, that people with AIDS who used cannabis "might be less likely to practice safe...sexual behavior." In response, ACT UP/DC asked Mason to resign his post if he failed to meet their demands to restore access to cannabis.

Brownies were served at the protest in honor of Rathbun, who had been previously arrested in July 1992 and was now facing felony possession charges for distributing cannabis brownies to AIDS patients. Outside the Department of Health and Human Services, Rathbun invited Mason to "follow me around for two days as I visit my kids in the wards, and then see where he stands on this".

In 1992, Rathbun helped Dennis Peron open the San Francisco Cannabis Buyers Club, the first medical cannabis dispensary in the United States. In 1996, Rathbun campaigned with Peron on behalf of California Proposition 215, a state-wide voter initiative that would allow patients to possess and cultivate cannabis for personal medical use with the recommendation of a physician. The initiative passed with more than 55 percent of the vote and became state law; 16 more states have since passed similar legislation. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration does not currently recognize any medicinal use of cannabis and it remains classified under Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act as a drug that "has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States". However, scientific research suggests that cannabis and its cannabinoid derivatives are useful in treating a variety of diseases.

Arrests

"My kids need this and I'm ready to go to jail for my principles... I'm not going to cut any deals with them. If I go to jail, I go to jail."

Rathbun was arrested for possession of cannabis three times, twice while she was baking brownies in 1981 and 1992, and once while she was delivering them to a sick customer in 1982. Associated Press, United Press International, Reuters, and CNN distributed stories about her arrests around the world, and brought her campaign to a wide audience, turning her grandmotherly visage into the public face of the American medical cannabis movement in the early 1990s and winning the movement a great deal of support and sympathy. Her publicized arrests contributed to the momentum behind public support for Proposition P and California Proposition 215.

In the early 1980s, Rathbun baked about 50 dozen cannabis brownies per day. She advertised her "original recipe brownies" on San Francisco bulletin boards, calling them "magically delicious", however an undercover cop discovered what she was doing. On the night of January 14, 1981, the police raided Rathbun's home and found more than 18 pounds (8.2 kg) of cannabis, 54 dozen cannabis brownies, and an assortment of other drugs. When Rathbun opened the door, she reportedly told the police, "I thought you guys were coming." She was 57 years old when she was first arrested. It was at this time that the media began calling her "Brownie Mary". She pled guilty to nine counts of possession and received three years probation. The judge sentenced her to 500 hours of community service. Rathbun began working with the Shanti Project, a support group for people with HIV/AIDS. According to Dennis Peron:

Those first 500 hours she worked at a variety of places, from the gay thrift store to the Shanti project, doing her community service in record time — 60 days. Although no longer obligated to do community service, she continued her work for St. Martin de Pores soup kitchen until 1982, when she joined the Shanti project, which was responding to the demands of the emerging AIDS crises. Mary had lost her only daughter in an auto accident... and now she adopted every kid in San Francisco as her own.

On December 7, 1982, Rathbun was walking down Market Street street carrying a bag of brownies for her friend who was suffering from cancer when she walked right into the path of one of the officers who had arrested her in 1981. He inquired as to the contents of her bag and found her in possession of four dozen cannabis brownies. Rathbun was taken to the city jail and held on multiple counts of possession and in violation of her probation.

Rathbun was arrested for a third time a decade later in Cazadero, California, on July 19, 1992, while pouring cannabis into brownie batter at the home of a grower. She was charged with possession of 2.5 pounds (1.1 kg) of cannabis and released on bail. The Sonoma County district attorney's office attempted to prosecute her, bringing her case international media coverage. Attorney Norman Elliott Kent notes that Rathbun's legal defense relied on medical necessity, a defense that was first used successfully in a cannabis-related case by Robert Randall in United States v. Randall (1976). According to Kent, Rathbun "was able to testify that her deliveries were made to assist others in need, not to advance individual greed, that the notability of her actions outweighed the reprehensibleness of her offense according to the law."

Personal life

Rathbun worked as a waitress for much of her life. She personally used cannabis to ease the arthritis pain in her knees. She purchased baking supplies for her brownies out of the monthly $650 check she received from Social Security. She was often seen wearing distinctive polyester pantsuits and was said to have a "sailor's mouth". Philosophically, she considered herself an anarchist and an atheist. She did not have any grandchildren.

Death

Rathbun had been suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and osteoarthritis for some time before her death. She also had artificial knees and she was a survivor of colon cancer. By the spring of 1996, she was experiencing extreme pain and was no longer able to bake, and began losing weight. She told Dennis Peron that she was considering traveling to Michigan for physician-assisted suicide at the hands of Jack Kevorkian.

In August 1998, she fell at her house and was admitted to Mount Zion Hospital for surgery on her neck and spine. She spent time at Davies Medical Center recovering from the operation with few visitors. Later, she was confined to a bed at Laguna Honda Hospital, a nursing home for the poor. Rathbun died of a heart attack at age 77 on April 10, 1999. On April 17, a candlelight vigil was held in her honor in the Castro, with 300 people in attendance, including her friend, district attorney Terence Hallinan.

Legacy

Rathbun's 1992 arrest was broadcast around the world on CNN. It caught the attention of her friend Donald Abrams, clinical professor at the University of California, San Francisco, and a physician at San Francisco General Hospital (SFGH). At the time, Abrams was in Amsterdam attending an AIDS conference and watched the news of Rathbun's arrest in his hotel room. Rick Doblin, of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), read about Rathbun in the newspaper. He sent a letter to the AIDS program at SFGH proposing that "Brownie Mary's institution" should consider conducting clinical trials of cannabis on the wasting syndrome in AIDS patients.

Inspired by Rathbun's arrest, Abrams and Doblin began to collaborate to develop a protocol to test the effects of cannabis on appetite and body weight. Five years later, and after a great deal of bureaucratic red tape, the research protocol, "Short-Term Effects of Cannabinoids in Patients with HIV-1 Infection" was approved in 1997. The study was funded with $978,000 from the National Institutes of Health with cannabis supplied by the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

Publications