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==Personal life== ==Personal life==
Rathbun worked as a waitress for much of her life. She used cannabis herself to ease the pain of ] in her knees.<ref name="Hatfield99"/> She purchased baking supplies for her brownies out of her monthly $650 ] check.<ref name="Woo"/> Often seen wearing her distinctive polyester pantsuits,<!-- and her trademark colored vest with buttons, cite needed --> she was said to have a "sailor's mouth".<ref>Costantinou, 1999</ref> Philosophically, she considered herself an ] and an ]. She did not have any grandchildren.<ref>"Mary Jane Rathbun", 1999; Woo, 1999; Goldberg, 1996</ref> Rathbun worked as a waitress for much of her life. She used cannabis herself to ease the pain of ] in her knees.<ref name="Hatfield99"/> She purchased baking supplies for her brownies out of her monthly $650 ] check.<ref name="Woo"/> Often seen wearing her distinctive polyester pantsuits,<!-- and her trademark colored vest with buttons, cite needed --> she was said to have a "sailor's mouth".<ref>Costantinou, 1999</ref> Philosophically, she considered herself an ] and an ].<ref>"Mary Jane Rathbun", 1999; Woo, 1999; Goldberg, 1996</ref>


==Death== ==Death==

Revision as of 04:33, 6 January 2013

Brownie Mary
BornMary Jane Rathbun
(1922-12-22)December 22, 1922
Chicago, Illinois
DiedApril 10, 1999(1999-04-10) (aged 77)
Forest Hill, San Francisco, California
Occupation(s)Hospital volunteer
Cannabis activist
Baker
Waitress
Years active
  • 1984–91 (active)
  • 1992–96 (less active)
Known for
ChildrenPeggy (1955–74)

Mary Jane Rathbun (December 22, 1922 – April 10, 1999), popularly known as Brownie Mary, was an American medical cannabis activist. As a hospital volunteer at San Francisco General Hospital, she became known for illegally baking and distributing chocolate cannabis brownies to AIDS patients. 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.

Rathbun was arrested on three 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 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. 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. Her mother, a conservative Irish Catholic, named her "Mary Jane". She 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 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.

San Francisco

Rathbun and Peron first met at Cafe Flore (pictured) in the early 1970s.

During World War II, she moved to San Francisco, California, where she met a man at a 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 in a car accident in the early 1970s, she returned to San Francisco.

Rathbun first met fellow activist Dennis Peron in 1974 in the Castro district at Cafe Flore, where they shared a cannabis cigarette. While working as a waitress at the International House of Pancakes, she earn extra money selling cannabis-laced brownies; she became known in the Castro for selling "magical brownies" out of a basket for several dollars each. Peron sold Rathbun's brownies at his Big Top pot supermarket on Castro Street. He was shot in the leg during a police raid on his business in 1977.

Beginning in 1984, Rathbun volunteered weekly in the AIDS ward (Ward 86) at San Francisco General Hospital. According to Donald Abrams, "she used to wheel our patients to radiology 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, 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. In spite of a sceptical reception, Peron persisted. He told Rathbun about the group several years later. When she spoke to the group about her first-hand experience distributing cannabis-laced brownies to people with AIDS, "the reception was warmer, but still skeptical", notes reporter Peter Gorman.

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. 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 recognized Rathbun's volunteer work at the hospital by declaring August 25 "Brownie Mary Day".

In September 1992 Rathbun joined ACT UP/DC at a protest in Washington, D.C., 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 made 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." 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 arrested the month before 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 Peron open the San Francisco Cannabis Buyers Club, the first medical cannabis dispensary in the United States. In 1996 she and Peron campaigned on behalf of California Proposition 215, a statewide 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; many other 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."

Brownie Mary

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 brownies 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. Her grandmotherly visage became the public face of the American medical cannabis movement in the early 1990s, winning support and sympathy for the movement. Support for Proposition P and California Proposition 215 gained momentum when her arrests were publicized.

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". 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 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 also 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 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 carrying a bag of brownies for a friend who was suffering from cancer when she by chance met 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. She was taken to the city jail and held on multiple counts of possession and violation of her probation.

Rathbun was arrested for a third time 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 nobility 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 used cannabis herself to ease the pain of osteoarthritis in her knees. She purchased baking supplies for her brownies out of her monthly $650 Social Security check. Often seen wearing her distinctive polyester pantsuits, she was said to have a "sailor's mouth". Philosophically, she considered herself an anarchist and an atheist.

Death

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

In August 1998, she was admitted to Mount Zion Hospital for surgery on her neck and spine after suffering a fall. She recovered from the operation at Davies Medical Center, receiving 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, 300 people, including her friend, district attorney Terence Hallinan, attended a candlelight vigil held in her honor in the Castro.

Legacy

News of Rathbun's 1992 arrest was broadcast around the world by CNN. The report 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). He was in Amsterdam attending an AIDS conference when he learned of Rathbun's arrest. Rick Doblin of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies 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 collaborated 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

  • Burch, Claire. (2007). California Chronicles of Medical Marijuana. Regent Press. DVD.
  • Rathbun, Mary; Dennis Peron (1996). Brownie Mary's Marijuana Cookbook and Dennis Peron's Recipe for Social Change. Trail of Smoke Publishing. ISBN 0-9639892-0-0.
  • Rathbun, Mary. (April 17, 1993). 50th Anniversary of LSD: Marijuana and Medical Uses; Sacred and Healing Plants and Psychedelic Drugs in the Treatment of Substance Abuse. San Francisco Unitarian Center. (Audio/Video).

See also

Notes

  1. Gumbel, 1999
  2. ^ Goldberg, 1996
  3. Saxon, 1999
  4. Goldberg, 1993
  5. Werner, 2001, pp. 26–28.
  6. Abrams, 2002.
  7. Associated Press, 2005, p. 2A: "Abrams started his campaign 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."
  8. ^ Gorman, 1993
  9. ^ Hatfield, 1999
  10. ^ Woo, 1999
  11. ^ Rathbun & Peron, 1996
  12. Zane, 1996, p. A13
  13. Gorman, 1993; Woo, 1999
  14. Abrams, Donald (May 17, 1999). "Lecture". CannabisMD Reports. Transcript.
  15. Adams, 1992
  16. "A Ride For Pride", 1997, p. 3B
  17. Gorman, 1994
  18. 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.
  19. Adams, 1992, p. 41A; Herscher, 1992, p. A1; Goldberg, 1996; Werner, 2001; "Medical-Marijuana", 1992a; The Sacramento Bee 1992, p. A1; Board of Supervisors, City and County of San Francisco, p. 869: ""Resolution declaring August 25, 1992 "Brownie Mary Day" in San Francisco honoring Mary Rathbun for her long and compassionate services at San Francisco General Hospital Ward 86. (Supervisors Hallinan, Alioto)".
  20. ^ "Activists Assail Mason", 1992, p. 9
  21. Saxon, 1999; Peron, 1996: "She beat the rap and went on to help me start the Cannabis Buyers Club". See also: McCollum, Bill (1997). "Medical Marijuana Referenda Movement in America: Hearing Before the Committee on the Judiciary, U.S. House of Representatives": "In 1992, he founded the San Francisco Cannabis Buyers' Club, the first medical marijuana facility in the United States."
  22. ^ Reed, 1999
  23. Institute of Medicine. (1999). "Development of Cannabinoid Drugs." Marijuana and Medicine: Assessing the Science Base. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. p. 213.
  24. In 2010, the Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research (CMCR) at the University of California stated that "we now have reasonable evidence that cannabis is a promising treatment in selected pain syndromes caused by injury or diseases of the nervous system, and possibly for painful muscle plasticity due to multiple sclerosis." According to the American College of Physicians (2008), the therapeutic benefits of cannabis for "HIV wasting and chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting" are well documented. See the CMCR Legislative Report (2010) for a review of the science to date.
  25. ^ Werner, 2001, p. 27
  26. ^ Costantinou, 1999, p. D
  27. Warren, 1999; Reuters, 1999; Gonzales, 1999
  28. Associated Press, United Press International, 1981, p. 2
  29. Associated Press, 1992, p. 5A
  30. Associated Press, 1982a
  31. ^ Pimsleur, 1999, p. A19
  32. Associated Press, 1982a; Associated Press, 1982b
  33. Herscher, 1992, p. A1
  34. Kent, 1997, p. 17
  35. Costantinou, 1999
  36. "Mary Jane Rathbun", 1999; Woo, 1999; Goldberg, 1996
  37. Ostler, 1998, p. A3
  38. Werner, 2001, p. 27; Abrams, 2002
  39. Associated Press, 2005, p. 2A; Werner, 2001, p. 28
  40. Abrams, Donald L. (April–June 1998). "Medical Marijuana: Tribulations and Trials." Journal of Psychoactive Drugs. 30 (2): 163–169. For the study, see: "Short-Term Effects of Cannabinoids in Patients with HIV-1 Infection: A Randomized, Placebo-Controlled Clinical Trial" (2002). J Clin Pharmacol. Regarding the study, see Rick Doblin, In the Matter of Lyle E. Craker, Ph.D., DEA. Docket No. 05-16: "The results of that study were extremely promising and I think very surprising to NIDA in that we, one of the common concerns that NIDA had put forth was that we know that marijuana hurts the immune system, how could you possibly talk about using marijuana with people who are immuno-compromised? And what Dr. Abrams found is that marijuana did not hurt the immune system, did not increase viral load, did not negatively interact with the protease inhibitors and actually did facilitate, increase caloric intake as well as weight gain, and also oral THC was included in this study as well as a placebo."

References

Further reading

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