‘If the narcs think I’m gonna stop baking brownies for my kids with AIDS, they can go fuck themselves in Macy’s window’ – Mary Jane Rathbun
Who was this brave and awesome lady?
Mary Jane Rathbun, also known as Brownie Mary, was born in 1922 and raised in a working-class neighborhood. Mary left her parents’ home in Minneapolis as a teen to forge her way in the world. She fought for causes such as abortion rights and the right to unionize early. The late 1930s took her to the counter-cultural hub of San Francisco. When her husband left, Mary needed to support their daughter. That’s when Mary chanced upon a new side hustle to make ends meet — baking pot brownies. Her “magically delicious” brownies quickly catapulted her into acclaim in the city’s primarily gay Castro district.
She met cannabis activist Dennis Peron in 1974 at the San Francisco institution, Cafe Flore, where they bonded over a joint. Peron started selling her brownies from his Big Top pot supermarket on Castro Street. Although she was not the first to cook with cannabis, her growing popularity attracted customers and local police. An undercover cop posing as a customer busted her while baking one evening in January 1981 and seized more than 18 pounds of weed. This arrest was only the first of three and represented a significant turning point in Brownie Mary’s life, as fate would have it.
Mary’s first arrest led to a sentence of hundreds of hours of community service. Most of those hours were spent volunteering at The Shanti Project, a support group for those living with life-threatening illnesses. This experience opened her eyes to individuals in the gay community living with HIV/AIDS whose loved ones had been shunned and, to a degree, forsaken by the mainstream medical establishment. Having lost her only daughter in a car accident in the early 1970s, she embraced the AIDS community as her kids. Patients with HIV/AIDS told Mary that her brownies served a twofold purpose of easing pain and boosting appetite. She was also told they offered relief to cancer patients undergoing chemo treatments. Mary and Dennis founded the San Francisco Cannabis Buyers Club, America’s first weed dispensary. At its height, the club counted 11,000 members. It aimed to supply marijuana to people with AIDS, cancer, and the drug would help other life-altering conditions that a doctor has certified.
“I know from smoking pot for over 30 years that this is a medicine that works,” “It works for wasting syndrome. The kids have no appetite, but they get out of bed when they eat a brownie and make themselves some food. And for chemotherapy, they eat half a brownie before a session, and when they get out, they eat the other half. It eases the pain. That’s what I’m here to do.” Mary explained to the Associated Press in a 1992 interview.
Despite three arrests and formal warnings from the authorities, Mary ramped up pot brownie production in the mid-1980s. She was reportedly baking 600 brownies a day in the late 1980s. Increasing numbers of AIDS patients require palliative care or relief from nausea associated with early HIV treatments. The demand among patients for her free brownies grew so great that, reportedly, she took to pulling names from a jar to see who would get the next dozen. Brownies no longer represented a way to boost her retirement fund but a way to help ease the suffering of others. She funded the treats with her Social Security checks and anonymous donations from local dealers to give them to patients for free. In 1992, Rathbun appeared before the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, preaching the benefits of medical marijuana. Her testimony influenced the Board to semi-decriminalize the plant, making medical marijuana possession the lowest priority in arrests and prosecution. Mary’s instinct for social justice naturally transitioned into campaigning for marijuana legalization. This shift was influenced, in part, by the work of close friend and fellow cannabis activist Dennis Peron. Together, the two activists began to shift views of cannabis, classified as a Schedule 1 controlled substance since 1970.
Finally, in 2003, a landmark study clarified the therapeutic benefits for patients living with HIV/AIDS. In 1991, Mary and Peron joined forces on Proposition P to make medical cannabis available in San Francisco and protect physicians from penalties for prescribing it. Mary was a regular face championing the cannabis cause at board meetings, complete with marijuana-inspired jewelry, pins, and unmistakable sweater vests.
Proposition P passed with almost 80% support on Nov. 5, 1991. Five years later, Californians voted yes for Proposition 215, making California the first state in the US to legalize marijuana for medicinal purposes. This landmark bill set a precedent, and Washington, Oregon, and Alaska soon followed with their medical marijuana initiatives.
Mary Jane passed away following a heart attack in 1999, but her legacy still endures. Along with an unwavering belief in the healing power of cannabis, her compassion helped her pioneer cannabis law reform. Recent measures in California have recognized the need to make cannabis accessible to low-income patients who need it most. In 2019, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed SB 34, the Dennis Peron and Brownie Mary Act, to exempt compassionate care programs from paying state cannabis taxes in California.
In 1992, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors declared Aug. 25 “Brownie Mary Day” to honor her work helping AIDS patients. It’s a day that is still celebrated in San Francisco. Dennis and Mary also co-authored a book three years before her death: Brownie Mary’s Marijuana Cookbook and Dennis Peron’s Recipe for Social Change. Alas, the book doesn’t include Mary’s famed “magically delicious” brownie recipe, so, unfortunately, her secret went with her to the grave. John Entwistle, Peron’s husband, said: “We loved to ask her, ‘What’s the recipe?’ and she always made Betty Crocker jokes, she once explained it to me: When you’re buying boxes of brownies, look at how much oil the recipe calls for, and go for the one that uses the most oil. (So maybe that was her secret? We’ll never know, but that’s definitely a magic brownie rule of thumb.) But the mystery – the recipe for her brownies – goes to her grave.” I believe most people’s first homemade edible is a box of brownies, so there is that. In my book, she will always be a hero.
Now that we know who this extraordinary lady was let’s get baking!
This post was dedicated with love in memory of Mary Jane Rathbun (1922-1999)
The author shall not be liable for any damage or injury alleged to be caused, directly or indirectly, by the information provided here. Neither is responsible for any allergic reaction or adverse reaction to any ingredient (including cannabis). No legal or medical advice is intended with this information, and under no circumstances should any cannabis product be given to children without professional medical guidance.