Mary Jane Rathbun (December 22, 1922 – April 10, 1999), popularly known as Brownie Mary, was an American medical cannabis rights activist. As a hospital volunteer at San Francisco General Hospital, she became known for baking and distributing cannabis brownies to AIDS patients.Gumbel, A. (1999, April 15). "Brownie Mary". The Independent, p. 6. Along with activist Dennis Peron, Rathbun lobbied for the legalization of cannabis for medical use, and she helped pass San Francisco Proposition P (1991) and California Proposition 215 (1996) to achieve those goals. She also contributed to the establishment of the San Francisco Cannabis Buyers Club, the first medical cannabis dispensary in the United States.Goldberg, 1996
Rathbun was arrested on three occasions, with each arrest bringing increased local, national, and international media attention to the medical cannabis movement.Saxon, 1999 Her grandmotherly appearance generated public sympathy for her cause and undermined 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.Goldberg, Stephanie B. (1993) "Not-so-secret Ingredient: How Is This Woman Breaking The Law?" Chicago Tribune. 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.Werner, 2001, pp. 26–28; Abrams, 2002; Associated Press, 2005, p. 2A: "Abrams started his campaign [applying for a government-funded clinical trial] in 1992 when "Brownie Mary," a 73-year-old San Francisco General Hospital volunteer was arrested for supplying AIDS patients with marijuana-laced brownies; Russell, 2003: "Abrams' own scientific studies of medical marijuana were inspired by Mary Jane Rathburn, better known as "Brownie Mary"; Holland, 2010: p. 252: Abrams on how it began: "It all started when Rick Doblin sent a little message to the director of research at the AIDS program at San Francisco General Hospital after Mary Rathbun was arrested in 1992, suggesting that a clinical trial showing the effectiveness of smoked marijuana should come from "Brownie Mary's Institution", as if she was our dean!" Doblin talks about this, In the Matter of Lyle E. Craker, Ph.D., DEA. Docket No. 05-16: "I spent about a year or so trying to find researchers willing to invest their time in this, and I couldn't find anybody. And then there was a report in the paper about a woman in California who, she was called "Brownie Mary." She made marijuana brownies for AIDS patients to help them with appetite. And she was arrested at—while she was getting marijuana to make into these brownies, and she worked at San Francisco General Hospital at the AIDS ward. And so I called doctors there, and I said one of your volunteers has just been arrested. Would you be interested in trying to do some research to show whether she was doing something that might actually have been helpful to these patients? She probably thought that it was helpful since, you know, she was permitted on the ward to do this. And so I spoke to a Dr. Donald Abrams and he said that he would be interested in trying to do research in this area, and so we started to collaborate"; Sheehy, 2000: "According to Donald Abrams, MD, lead author of the study and professor of clinical medicine in the UCSF Positive Health Program at San Francisco General Hospital Medical Center, this was the first attempt to study the effects of marijuana in people with HIV and one of the most comprehensive studies about the effects of marijuana on the immune system."
Early life Brownie Mary was born Mary Jane Rathbun in Chicago, Illinois, on December 22, 1922.Gorman, 1993 Her mother, a conservative Irish Catholic, named her "Mary Jane". She was raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where she attended Catholic school.Hatfield, 1999 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 worked as a waitress for most of her adult life. Social activism appealed to her from a young age; she traveled from Chicago to Wisconsin to campaign for the right of miners to form unions. In the late 1940s, she worked as an activist promoting abortion rights for women in Minneapolis. During World War II, she moved to San Francisco, California, where she met a man at a United Service Organization (USO) dance. They married, but soon divorced. The marriage produced a daughter, Peggy, who was born in 1955. She later moved to Reno, Nevada, but after Peggy was killed by a drunk driverAbrams, Donald. (February 23, 2012). "Marijuana: Is it Medicine Yet? Cannabis for Pain and Palliative Care ". The New School at CommonWeal. Event occurs at 4:54 in the audio file. in a car accident in the early 1970s, Rathbun returned to San Francisco.
Activism 1974–1982; Peron, two arrests Rathbun first met fellow activist Dennis Peron in 1974 in the Castro district at Cafe Flore, where they shared a joint. While working as a waitress at the International House of Pancakes, she earned extra money selling cannabis-laced brownies; she became known in the Castro for selling "magical brownies" out of a basket for several dollars each. Rathbun baked and sold cannabis brownies for profit out of her house.Torgoff, 2005, pp. 442-443; Goldberg 1996 Mary would cook large pots of butter and cannabis slowly on the stove for hours in her little kitchen to infuse the butter herself to use in her "magical brownies"Nuala Sawyer Bishari. “The Legacy of Brownie Mary.” SFWeekly, 19 Apr. 2017, www.sfweekly.com/archives/the-legacy-of-brownie-mary/article_b9ac6c31-dd01-5228-8d63-f0418aed36dd.html.. Peron also sold Rathbun's brownies at his Big Top pot supermarket on Castro Street.Rathbun & Peron, 1996 He was shot in the leg during a police raid on his business in 1977.Zane, Maitland (1996, August 6). "Raid on Pot Club: Founder's struggle for legalization". San Francisco Chronicle, p. A13. ()
In the early 1980s, Rathbun was baking about 50 dozen cannabis brownies per day. She advertised her "original recipe brownies" on San Francisco bulletin boards, calling them "magically delicious". An undercover police officer discovered what she was doing, and on the night of January 14, 1981, police raided Rathbun's home and found more than 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.Associated Press, United Press International, 1981, p. 2 It was at this time that the media began calling her "Brownie Mary".Associated Press, 1992a, p. 5A She pleaded guilty to nine counts of possession and received three years probation.Associated Press, 1982a The judge also sentenced her to 500 hours of community service. Rathbun began working with the Shanti Project, a support group for people with HIV/AIDS.Pimsleur, J. L. (1999, April 13). "". San Francisco Chronicle. p. A19. According to Peron:
Rathbun's brownie customers were mostly gay men. When they first began coming down with AIDS in the early 1980s, she noticed that cannabis helped them with the wasting syndrome; she also found this to be true of cancer patients.Torgoff, 2005, pp. 442-443 People donated cannabis to Rathbun and she began baking brownies in the hundreds and distributing them to sick people free of charge. Rathbun's monthly $650 Social Security check helped her to purchase baking supplies.Torgoff, 2005, pp. 442-443; Woo, 1999
On December 7, 1982, Rathbun was walking down Market Street carrying a bag of brownies when she by chance met one of the officers who had originally arrested her in 1981. Rathbun was on her way to deliver cannabis brownies for a friend who had cancer and was suffering from the side effects of chemotherapy.Bock, Alan W. (2000). Waiting to Inhale: The Politics of Medical Marijuana . Santa Ana, CA: Seven Locks Press. . . p. 167. The officer inquired as to the contents of her bag and found her in possession of four dozen cannabis brownies. She was taken to the city jail and held on multiple counts of possession and violation of her probation.Associated Press, 1982a; Associated Press, 1982b The district attorney eventually dropped the charges.
1984–1991; volunteerism, Proposition P Beginning in 1984, Rathbun volunteered weekly in the AIDS ward (Ward 86) at San Francisco General Hospital (SFGH).Gorman, 1993; Woo, 1999 According to Donald Abrams, "she used to wheel our patients to radiology [and] take their specimens to the lab".Abrams, Donald (May 17, 1999). . CannabisMD Reports. Transcript. Ward 86 honored her with a "Volunteer of The Year" award in 1986. Author Carol Pogash profiled Rathbun's volunteer work at SFGH in her book, As Real As It Gets: The Life of a Hospital at the Center of the AIDS Epidemic (1992).Olshan, Joseph; Nelson, Sara; Rachlin, Jill (February 8, 1992). "As Real as It Gets: the Life of a Hospital at the Center of the Aids Epidemic". People. 39 (5); See Pogash, C. (1992). As Real As It Gets: The Life of a Hospital at the Center of the AIDS Epidemic. Carol Publishing Corporation. .
In New York in the early 1990s, Peron spoke at a meeting of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) about the possible use of cannabis for the relief of AIDS symptoms. Multiple studies had demonstrated that cannabis could help with nausea and the loss of appetite suffered by patients undergoing therapy for diseases like cancer and AIDS.Hubert, C. (1994, September 4). "Underground Club a Hit with Medical Pot Users". Sacramento Bee, p. A1. However, cannabis had been illegal in the United States since 1937. Classified under Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act in 1970 as a drug that "has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States", medicinal users of cannabis were subject to arrest."Mary Jane Rathbun", 1999, p. 86: "The change in the Californian law in 1996 came about when voters supported a "state initiative" over marijuana. Similar initiatives have since changed the law in several other American states. However, under a federal law, passed in 1937, possession of marijuana remains prohibited, and this law takes precedence over state law. As a result, users of marijuana for medicinal reasons, even where the state law sanctions such use, are not necessarily safe from arrest."Institute of Medicine. (1999). "Development of Cannabinoid Drugs." Marijuana and Medicine: Assessing the Science Base. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. p. 213.
In spite of a skeptical reception at his initial meeting with ACT UP, Peron persisted. He told Rathbun about ACT UP, and she later spoke to the group about her first-hand experience distributing cannabis-laced brownies to people with AIDS. Reporter Peter Gorman noted that this time "the reception was warmer, but still skeptical".Gorman, P. (1994, December). "Marijuana And AIDS". High Times.
Rathbun helped work on Proposition P, which 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. Proposition P passed with the support of 79 percent of San Francisco voters on November 5, 1991.Reed 1999; Herscher 1992, p. A1; Grim 2009, p. 201; See Full text of Proposition P (1991) and the amended Resolution 141-92 signed on Aug. 31, 1992.
1992–1997; third arrest, Proposition 215