As I take my daily walk, a habit formed and crystallized by the last year-plus of pandemic-induced stir crazy, I’m noticing some things. Maybe you have too; there are people outside again, for example — a comforting regularity. Babies pushed expensive strollers, dogs scrambling like nuisances in the park, bros slack-lining again. But the most notable change is probably the odor.
Everywhere I go now, it seems, it smells like weed.
I’ve grown up in a San Francisco that has never felt weed-averse, that appears to have embraced cannabis dispensaries, lounges, delivery services, and even large-scale events like Outside Lands’ Grass Lands. I’ve personally worked in the cannabis industry for five or so years, and met people from every inhabitable continent who want to spark up and learn more, but can’t due to laws in their home state or country.
To dabble and experience cannabis, even if it’s only a hit or two here, a Kiva espresso bean there, without fear of legal retribution, is liberating.
TBI’s own Matt Charnock expressed this trend succinctly in his piece It’s ‘Rainbow-Washing’ Season where the visual aesthetics of Pride, most notably the Pride flag, become a profitable opportunity by companies who do little to nothing to actively platform, employ or support the community they’re targeting.
But, despite their enthusiasm for edible gummies and prerolls, most recreational patrons have no concrete understanding of how we got here. They wonder why legislation isn’t passing or even on the ballot back home, but haven’t done the legwork themselves. It’s easy to attribute the legalization of cannabis to the capitalist spirit of America, as an inevitable compromise on our quest to hoard the most wealth and make those tax dollars off citizens. And hey, that’s kinda what’s going on right now.
But it wasn’t always.
Cannabis history in the United States dates back to before the Civil War, even before the United States was called such. Legalization is a bit simpler to credit, especially when we live where it happened, and it’s always been much more diverse, and queerer, than a trip to the dispensary would have you believe.
It’s also, glaring lack of a parade and large-scale events two years in a row aside, Pride Month, a celebration of LGBTQIA+ joy, culture, and identity stemming from the 1969 Stonewall Uprising in New York City. What began as a literal counterattack by Black and brown trans and queer people against the systemic violence by police, led by trans woman Marsha P. Johnson, became a national movement to recognize and sanction the rights and autonomy of LGBTQ+ people.
The intersection of Pride and cannabis in San Francisco, ergo, is not accidental. The two communities overlap in significant ways, and wouldn’t be what they are today without the other.
Not unlike cannabis, Pride has gone through some image reworking of its own.
TBI’s own Matt Charnock expressed this trend succinctly in his piece It’s ‘Rainbow-Washing’ Season where the visual aesthetics of Pride, most notably the Pride flag, become a profitable opportunity by companies who do little to nothing to actively platform, employ or support the community they’re targeting.
Just as cannabis has been rebranded as an alcohol alternative, “mommy’s little helper” or literally cocaine, so has Pride been divorced from its roots; the revolving-door debate of kink at Pride, as many outlets have noted this year, is largely due to capitalist encroachment and subsequent respectability politics pushed by the corporations that sponsor events.
The intersection of Pride and cannabis in San Francisco, ergo, is not accidental. The two communities overlap in significant ways, and wouldn’t be what they are today without the other.
Both the LGBTQIA+ and cannabis communities had been in San Francisco for ages, dating back to the Gold Rush, during which the population of California exploded and people from all walks of life flocked to the coast for the chance to get rich and put down new roots (at the expense of the native Ohlone, who had much more expansive views of gender, sexuality, and mind-altering substances anyway!)
Queer bars were popping up, and cannabis and hemp had long been brought to the Americas by Spanish colonists. The two existed illicitly, almost in parallel, through the Barbary Coast era, Reefer Madness, and the first two World Wars. But it would take the Vietnam War and two particular New Yorkers to push cannabis and queerness activism together, and ignite the legalization movement. They were Harvey Milk and Dennis Peron.
According to Michael Koehn and his husband David Goldman, founders of the Brownie Mary Democratic Club and long-time cannabis activists, Milk’s legacy was hope incarnate.
“Harvey Milk said you have to give people hope, and he was right! It was like living through a war, and cannabis gave people hope,” says Koehn of the early days of the AIDS epidemic. “That was life-changing.”
Both Goldman and Koehn had first tried cannabis as college students, as many did in the late 60s and early 70s, and liked it. “I knew intuitively that it was good for me. I discovered it could cure my headaches and my glaucoma.” Goldman says.
Koehn moved to the city in 1970, and Goldman in 1973, when Milk’s reputation as a community organizer was on the rise and his running for office seemed imminent. At the same time, veterans were returning from war in Vietnam and bringing the Asian nation’s native cannabis with them to treat “nightmares,” or what we now understand to be symptoms of PTSD.
It was also a muse and companion for jazz musicians and the Beat poets; Allen Ginsburg wrote an infamous essay in the Atlantic in 1966 specifically addressing cannabis skeptics, because the “actual experience of the smoked herb has been clouded by a fog of dirty language perpetrated by a crowd of fakers who have not had the experience and yet insist on downgrading it.” Sound familiar?
One of the first Pride parades was held right here in San Francisco, and within a decade after Stonewall, Milk was the first out elected official in the state. He made an impressive contribution to local and national politics before his assassination by former colleague Dan White, but one of his biggest was the non-policy Proposition W, a city measure that asked the city’s district attorney and police force to cease arresting and prosecuting people for possessing, selling, and using marijuana all the way back in 1978. His co-author, and perhaps the single person most responsible for Proposition 215, was Dennis Peron.
Peron, like Milk, was from New York, specifically the Bronx, though he grew up in Long Island. He was a Vietnam War veteran, the kind that brought pounds of dope home with him, and he moved to San Francisco after returning from war to “find love.” He did and made Milk’s acquaintance while living in a commune in the Haight along the way.
Just a few years after Milk’s death, the first case of HIV and AIDS would be recorded in 1981, though people had been contracting it and dying from it for years already. It was global devastation that was particularly brutal for LGBTQ+ communities across the United States, and almost nowhere more so than San Francisco; over 18,500 San Franciscans passed due to AIDS between 1981 and 2000, per the city’s Department of Public Health.
Koehn himself contracted HIV during that time and lost his partner to its complications in 1985. Cannabis was not only a way to cope with symptoms and medication side effects but also from grief. For Goldman, 1985 would be the year he met Mary Jane Rathbun, more famously known as Brownie Mary, while she was selling her “magically delicious” cannabis-infused brownies on a street corner in the Castro.
“They weren’t very good, by today’s standards,” Goldman says, but the flavor wasn’t the point.
While not necessarily queer herself, Brownie Mary was, as Goldman previously told Eaze, “revered.” She brought brownies to the AIDS patients at San Francisco General Hospital and was wholly undeterred by her multiple arrests. After Peron’s partner also passed from AIDS in 1990, the two weed activists/celebrities teamed up, co-authoring the pro-medical marijuana Proposition P in 1991 and opening the San Francisco Cannabis Buyers Club shortly thereafter, supposedly the nation’s first cannabis club.
Goldman and Koehn recall a strong community vibe; they went every week, not only to load up on medicine but to see friends, grab a bite and share a smoke. Peron was a social creature, and apparently had an infinite supply of oranges and peanuts to offer patrons. They could also convene and discuss what the cannabis community needed in order to thrive as a viable industry.
“As a gay man, I’d like to see the industry embrace the LBGTQIA+ community the entire year, not just in June.”
It was this support and momentum that would help California pass Proposition 215, AKA The Compassionate Use Act of 1996, that finally gave patients seeking and using medical marijuana protection from the law. In the 25 years since 18 states including California have legalized cannabis for recreational use, and 36 states, as well as multiple territories, have medical marijuana programs. Getting here hasn’t been easy, and LGBTQIA+ operators know there’s still work to be done.
“They need to keep fighting for the things we were fighting for. We wanted employment protection, the right to consume wherever tobacco is consumed,” says Goldman, and those are the same issues coming up in 2021. “We want it de-scheduled and federal prohibition ended. We also hope cannabis entrepreneurs will honor the spirit of Brownie Mary and give away as much cannabis medicine as possible to patients, and those future generations will continue to ensure the low-income among us get cannabis. We have a lot of work to do.”
Dennis Peron passed from cancer in 2018, and Brownie Mary back in 1999, but their life’s work means I can sit here writing an article about weed while eyeing the bong I keep on my nightstand. It means innumerable patients around the country living with HIV, cancer, epilepsy, chronic pain, glaucoma, IBS, multiple sclerosis, eating disorders, PTSD and some mental illnesses have another option for their treatment. It also means that those of us today owe it to everyone who isn’t alive or free to partake of these dank fruits to make it better than how we found it.
Austin Stanley, co-creator of Charlotte’s Web CBD strain that would give children living with epilepsy a chance at quality of life, hopes the education and activism surrounding both communities can transcend a marketable time hook.
“As a gay man, I’d like to see the industry embrace the LBGTQIA+ community the entire year, not just in June. The history of the LBGTQIA+ community and marijuana are interwoven, and neither could have made it this far without having to constantly fight for respect and legal recognition; I have been a part of both.”
For Tracey Mason, the founder of infused beverage brand House of Saka, she owes it to the queer legacy that allowed her to transition from a career in the wine and spirits industry to cannabis a few years ago to live her best life.
“I certainly feel a responsibility as a gay woman to represent our community in the most positive way. When I was younger, I felt that being out was important. The beauty of the community is gay looks like a lot of things. The more people who are out and proud changes the perception of what we look like; it changes the face of people’s prejudices,” she says.
The media landscape surrounding cannabis has also shifted from a beat largely covered by straight white guys. JJ McKay, the publisher of cannabis lifestyle site The Fresh Toast often feels like a minority at major conferences and conventions.
“I’ve been part of conferences, where I would still say it’s, you know, 85% or more straight white guys. And so it’s important to get out there; with that comes access to funding access to the political system to be able to open a retail store or get a license. I have not seen a lot of good leadership in the gay community. But I just think it’s a nascent community and harder unless you have the right resources and the right networks.”
It seemed almost too good to be true when President Biden and Vice President Harris were entertaining the idea of federally rescheduling cannabis earlier this year, and it was. They backpedaled, and despite New York’s swift legalization by Gov. Cuomo and most recently Connecticut passing adult use, it doesn’t seem like 2021 will be the year legal cannabis goes nationwide. In the meantime, Goldman and Koehn are still hosting their monthly meetings with fellow operators, activists, and club members, discussing and developing their next plans of action.
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“The mainstreaming of cannabis has created a lot of apathy. ‘You got it legalized, what more do you want?’ There’s a lot more that we need to work on,” says Koehn. “That’s what we’re about.”
