After a long battle with lung cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), beloved California…
Sure, everyone loves those fucking Hot Tub Time Machine flicks nowadays because they’re all about the 80’s and its happy-go-lucky neon and spandex, hairy glam bands and flock of seagull haircuts, but everyone seems to have forgotten all about the AIDS epidemic that ravaged the decade. Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome or AIDS is the plague of our time, a disaster that’s continuing to shape our world’s history. It emerged in the U.S. in the early 1980’s and was originally referred to as the “Gay Disease” because it first appeared among the gay community. At first society felt safe, but the real nightmare began when people realized it wasn’t only affecting gays.
During the AIDS epidemic it was war on homosexuals. There were thousands of people drowning in judgment, hatred and fear all across the country. People were being brutalized, criticized, thrown out of their communities, their homes, being disowned by the ones they loved; their parents, their children.
Marijuana brought those people together. It gave many a vehicle to heal…to find solace, understanding and compassion in a community of acceptance and understanding. Marijuana provided not only much needed relief from the pains associated with AIDS but the pains associated with living in a society that feared AIDS as much as it did homosexuals. It was in San Francisco, for the gay community specifically, that the first compassionate marijuana dispensary was established. That dispensary was a flagship of hope for the downtrodden, those suffering with AIDS and those suffering as they watched their loved ones die from it. Marijuana and love was handed out liberally and organizing gave all those, not just the sick and the dying, a voice.
“In fact, I don’t know if everyone knows this story,” continues DeAngelo, “but Dennis Peron’s lover Jonathan was dying and the police came in and raided Dennis’s home and found a quarter-pound of cannabis.”
That Dennis he’s talking about is Dennis Peron, a legendary figure in San Francisco politics: a Vietnam veteran, marijuana dealer, AIDS activist and close friend and political associate of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay member of the city’s board of supervisors, who was assassinated in 1978 along with Mayor George Moscone. When the killer, fellow Supervisor Dan White was given a slap on the wrist after claiming “diminished capacity” because he binged on Twinkies, hundreds rioted in the streets and torched police cars. Peron missed the action because he was in jail, convicted of peddling marijuana in a converted commune on Castro Street, in the heart of SF’s gay community.
“The last time they busted me was with Jonathan ,” continues Peron, “he had AIDS. Marijuana was his best medicine. The cops came in one night, while he was dying, and stole four ounces of pot that we had been using as medicine. He was 90 pounds and was weak and frail and covered with Kaposi’s Sarcoma lesions. He was the love of my life and I had to watch him from the top floor being beaten, with a gun to his head. And I decided they would never do this again.”
Jonathan West was Peron’s best friend and lover. After that vicious and merciless bust, he went to court and claimed that the cannabis was his and he was using it to treat the symptoms associated with AIDS. He insisted Peron was his caretaker and was administering the cannabis.
“That was the first ruling that we ever got in any court anywhere,” explains DeAngelo, “that recognized medical cannabis and was the spark that set off the medical cannabis movement.”
Soon Jonathan’s death supercharged Peron’s activism. He sponsored successful referendums for decriminalizing marijuana use and sales in San Francisco. In 1991, Peron organized Proposition P, the San Francisco medical marijuana initiative, which passed with 79% of the vote. Prop P did not have force of law, but was simply a resolution declaring the city’s support for medical marijuana. The California legislature went on to approve medical marijuana bills by State Senator Milton Marks and Assemblyman John Vasconcellos, but they were vetoed by then Governor Pete Wilson.
“The club took on a life of its own,” Peron explained to Stuff Stoners Like in a later interview. “When we first started the club, it was mostly for AIDS patients. Then, we started seeing different ailments and found that pot helped those people too. We’ve provided a refuge for sick people, a place of empowerment, education and healing. It’s friendly and clean. We proved that marijuana is good medicine, and that people who use marijuana are good people.”
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That's substantially true, Dennis Peron is significantly responsible to leading the medical cannabis charge — what he did was passionate and heroic — but it deserves to be remembered that there were a lot of us in those local meetings, and we had a great deal of support from many others, including Dale Gieringer of Cal NORML and the Drug Policy Foundation lead at the time by Arnold S. Trebach & Kevin Zeese. Those local networks and national resources made our work (Dennis's on medical cannabis & mine on syringe exchange) more effective than anything we could have done alone.
Dennis is one of the most remarkable men in the world. he started a revolution that that is ending the nearly 80 yr old strangle hold the government has held over pot. Dennis is welcome in my home ant time or day.