Brownie Mary
Encyclopedia
Mary Jane Rathbun popularly known as Brownie Mary, was an American medical cannabis
activist. Rathbun was a hospital volunteer
at San Francisco General Hospital
who became known for illegally baking and distributing chocolate cannabis brownies
to AIDS patients. Along with Dennis Peron
, Rathbun was active in efforts to legalize cannabis for medical use, and she helped pass San Francisco Proposition P (1991) and California Proposition 215
(1996) to achieve those goals. Rathbun 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 separate 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 worked against attempts by the district attorney's office to prosecute her for possession. The City of San Francisco eventually gave her permission to distribute cannabis brownies to people with AIDS. Rathbun's arrests generated interest in the medical community and motivated researchers to propose one of the first clinical trial
s to study the effects of cannabinoids in HIV-infected adults.
December 22, 1922. She was named "Mary Jane" by her mother, a conservative Irish Catholic. "Given my background and reputation and my adopted name, my poor old mother is surely turning cartwheels in her grave", Rathbun later recalled.
Rathbun 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 became involved in social activism early in life, traveling from Chicago to Wisconsin to campaign for the rights of miners to form unions. In the late 1940s, she worked as an activist on abortion rights for women in Minneapolis.
Rathbun first met Dennis Peron in 1974 in the Castro district at Café Flore
, where they shared a cannabis cigarette
together. During that time, Rathbun was working as a waitress at the International House of Pancakes. For extra money, she would sell cannabis-laced brownies; she became known in the Castro for selling "magical brownies" out of a basket for several dollars each. Peron would also sell Rathbun's brownies on Castro Street at his Big Top pot supermarket. Police raided Peron's business in 1977 and shot him in the leg.
Beginning in 1984, Brownie Mary volunteered each Thursday in the AIDS ward (Ward 86) at San Francisco General Hospital
. According to Donald Abrams, "she used to wheel our patients to radiology [and] 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.
(ACT-UP) about the alleged benefits of cannabis for the relief of AIDS symptoms. Few believed or wanted to listen to him. Nevertheless, Peron persisted, and several years later he introduced the group to Rathbun. She spoke to the group about her first-hand experience distributing cannabis-laced brownies to people with AIDS. Peter Gorman
reported that this time, "the reception was warmer, but still skeptical".
Rathbun helped work on Proposition P, which was passed by 79 percent of San Francisco voters on November 5, 1991. Proposition P 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. 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 also recognized Rathbun's volunteer work at the hospital by declaring August 25 "Brownie Mary Day".
In September 1992, Rathbun joined ACT UP/DC in Washington, D.C. for a protest 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 expressed 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." In response, 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 previously arrested in July 1992 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 Dennis Peron open the San Francisco Cannabis Buyers Club, the first medical cannabis dispensary in the United States. In 1996, Rathbun campaigned with Peron on behalf of California Proposition 215
, a state-wide 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; 16 more 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 may be useful in treating a variety of diseases.
, United Press International
, Reuters
, and CNN
distributed stories about her arrests around the world, and brought her campaign to a wide audience, turning her grandmotherly visage into the public face of the American medical cannabis movement in the early 1990s and winning the movement a great deal of support and sympathy. Her publicized arrests contributed to the momentum behind public support for Proposition P and California Proposition 215.
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", however an undercover cop discovered what she was doing. On the night of January 14, 1981, the 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 plead guilty to nine counts of possession and received three years probation. The judge 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 Dennis Peron:
On December 7, 1982, Rathbun was walking down Market Street street carrying a bag of brownies for her friend who was suffering from cancer when she walked right into the path of 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. Rathbun was taken to the city jail and held on multiple counts of possession and in violation of her probation.
Rathbun was arrested for a third time a decade later 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 notability of her actions outweighed the reprehensibleness of her offense according to the law."
.
In August 1998, she fell at her house and was admitted to Mount Zion Hospital for surgery on her neck and spine. She spent time at Davies Medical Center recovering from the operation with 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, a candlelight vigil was held in her honor in the Castro, with 300 people in attendance, including her friend, district attorney Terence Hallinan
.
, and a physician at San Francisco General Hospital (SFGH). At the time, Abrams was in Amsterdam attending an AIDS conference and watched the news of Rathbun's arrest in his hotel room. Rick Doblin
, of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies
(MAPS), 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 began to collaborate 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
.
Medical cannabis
Medical cannabis refers to the use of parts of the herb cannabis as a physician-recommended form of medicine or herbal therapy, or to synthetic forms of specific cannabinoids such as THC as a physician-recommended form of medicine...
activist. Rathbun was a hospital volunteer
Hospital volunteer
Hospital volunteers work without regular pay in a variety of health care settings, usually under the supervision of a nurse. Most hospitals train and supervise volunteers through a specialized non-profit organization called an auxiliary. The director of the auxiliary is usually a paid employee of...
at San Francisco General Hospital
San Francisco General Hospital
San Francisco General Hospital is the main public hospital in San Francisco, California, and the only Level I Trauma Center serving San Francisco and northern San Mateo County...
who became known for illegally baking and distributing chocolate cannabis brownies
Chocolate brownie
A chocolate brownie is a flat, baked square or bar introduced in the United States at the end of the nineteenth century and popularized in both the U.S. and Canada during the first half of the twentieth century. The brownie is sliced from a type of dense, rich chocolate cake, which is, in texture,...
to AIDS patients. Along with Dennis Peron
Dennis Peron
Dennis Peron is an openly gay American medical marijuana and LGBT activist and businessman who was the figurehead for the legality of cannabis throughout the 1990s influencing many in California and thus changing the political debate of marijuana in the United States...
, Rathbun was active in efforts to legalize cannabis for medical use, and she helped pass San Francisco Proposition P (1991) and California Proposition 215
California Proposition 215 (1996)
Proposition 215, or the Compassionate Use Act of 1996, is a California law concerning the use of medical cannabis. It was enacted, on November 5, 1996, by means of the initiative process, and passed with 5,382,915 votes in favor and 4,301,960 against.The proposition was a state-wide voter...
(1996) to achieve those goals. Rathbun 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 separate 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 worked against attempts by the district attorney's office to prosecute her for possession. The City of San Francisco eventually gave her permission to distribute cannabis brownies to people with AIDS. Rathbun's arrests generated interest in the medical community and motivated researchers to propose one of the first clinical trial
Clinical trial
Clinical trials are a set of procedures in medical research and drug development that are conducted to allow safety and efficacy data to be collected for health interventions...
s to study the effects of cannabinoids in HIV-infected adults.
Early life
Brownie Mary was born Mary Jane Rathbun in Chicago, Illinois, onDecember 22, 1922. She was named "Mary Jane" by her mother, a conservative Irish Catholic. "Given my background and reputation and my adopted name, my poor old mother is surely turning cartwheels in her grave", Rathbun later recalled.
Rathbun was raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota
Minneapolis, Minnesota
Minneapolis , nicknamed "City of Lakes" and the "Mill City," is the county seat of Hennepin County, the largest city in the U.S. state of Minnesota, and the 48th largest in the United States...
, 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 became involved in social activism early in life, traveling from Chicago to Wisconsin to campaign for the rights of miners to form unions. In the late 1940s, she worked as an activist on abortion rights for women in Minneapolis.
San Francisco
During World War II, she moved to San Francisco, California, and met a man at a USO dance. They married but soon divorced. Rathbun had a daughter, Peggy, in 1955. She worked as a waitress for most of her adult life. She moved to Reno, Nevada, but after Peggy died in a car accident in the early 1970s, she moved back to San Francisco.Rathbun first met Dennis Peron in 1974 in the Castro district at Café Flore
Café Flore
Café Flore is a popular cafe, restaurant and bar in San Francisco's Castro neighborhood with a large outdoor patio for dining. It is "one of the neighborhood's most well known establishments"...
, where they shared a cannabis cigarette
Joint (cannabis)
Joint is a slang term for a cigarette rolled using cannabis. Rolling papers are the most common rolling medium among industrialized countries, however brown paper, cigarettes with the tobacco removed, and newspaper are commonly used in developing countries. Modern papers are now made from a wide...
together. During that time, Rathbun was working as a waitress at the International House of Pancakes. For extra money, she would sell cannabis-laced brownies; she became known in the Castro for selling "magical brownies" out of a basket for several dollars each. Peron would also sell Rathbun's brownies on Castro Street at his Big Top pot supermarket. Police raided Peron's business in 1977 and shot him in the leg.
Beginning in 1984, Brownie Mary volunteered each Thursday in the AIDS ward (Ward 86) at San Francisco General Hospital
San Francisco General Hospital
San Francisco General Hospital is the main public hospital in San Francisco, California, and the only Level I Trauma Center serving San Francisco and northern San Mateo County...
. According to Donald Abrams, "she used to wheel our patients to radiology [and] 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
Grand Marshal
Grand Marshal is a ceremonial, military, or political office of very high rank. The term has its origins with the word "Marshal" with the first usage of the term "Grand Marshal" as a ceremonial title for certain religious orders...
of the San Francisco Gay Pride Parade, along with Dennis Peron.
Activism
In New York in the early 1990s, cannabis activist Dennis Peron spoke at a meeting of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash PowerAIDS Coalition to Unleash Power
AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power is an international direct action advocacy group working to impact the lives of people with AIDS and the AIDS pandemic to bring about legislation, medical research and treatment and policies to ultimately bring an end to the disease by mitigating loss of health and...
(ACT-UP) about the alleged benefits of cannabis for the relief of AIDS symptoms. Few believed or wanted to listen to him. Nevertheless, Peron persisted, and several years later he introduced the group to Rathbun. She spoke to the group about her first-hand experience distributing cannabis-laced brownies to people with AIDS. Peter Gorman
Peter Gorman
Peter Gorman an investigative journalist and former editor-in-chief of High Times magazine. He lives in Joshua, Texas, and spends at least 3 months of every year living in Peru, where he works with Ayahuasca and other plant based medicines, as well as doing political work...
reported that this time, "the reception was warmer, but still skeptical".
Rathbun helped work on Proposition P, which was passed by 79 percent of San Francisco voters on November 5, 1991. Proposition P 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. In August 1992, Rathbun testified about medical cannabis in a hearing held by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors
San Francisco Board of Supervisors
The San Francisco Board of Supervisors is the legislative body within the government of the City and County of San Francisco, California, United States.-Government and politics:...
. The Board passed a resolution making the arrest or prosecution of people in possession of or growing medical cannabis the "lowest priority". The Board also recognized Rathbun's volunteer work at the hospital by declaring August 25 "Brownie Mary Day".
In September 1992, Rathbun joined ACT UP/DC in Washington, D.C. for a protest against the medical cannabis policies of the U.S. government. They delivered a letter to James O. Mason
James O. Mason
James Ostermann Mason was the United States Assistant Secretary for Health from 1989 to 1993 and the Acting Surgeon General of the United States from 1989 to 1990. As the ASH he was also a former four-star admiral in the United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps...
, then director of the United States Public Health Service
United States Public Health Service
The Public Health Service Act of 1944 structured the United States Public Health Service as the primary division of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare , which later became the United States Department of Health and Human Services. The PHS comprises all Agency Divisions of Health and...
, 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 expressed 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." In response, 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 previously arrested in July 1992 and was now facing felony possession charges for distributing cannabis brownies to AIDS patients. Outside the Department of Health and Human Services
United States Department of Health and Human Services
The United States Department of Health and Human Services is a Cabinet department of the United States government with the goal of protecting the health of all Americans and providing essential human services. Its motto is "Improving the health, safety, and well-being of America"...
, 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 Dennis Peron open the San Francisco Cannabis Buyers Club, the first medical cannabis dispensary in the United States. In 1996, Rathbun campaigned with Peron on behalf of California Proposition 215
California Proposition 215 (1996)
Proposition 215, or the Compassionate Use Act of 1996, is a California law concerning the use of medical cannabis. It was enacted, on November 5, 1996, by means of the initiative process, and passed with 5,382,915 votes in favor and 4,301,960 against.The proposition was a state-wide voter...
, a state-wide 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; 16 more 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
Controlled Substances Act
The Controlled Substances Act was enacted into law by the Congress of the United States as Title II of the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970. The CSA is the federal U.S. drug policy under which the manufacture, importation, possession, use and distribution of certain...
as a drug that "has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States". However, scientific research suggests that cannabis may be useful in treating a variety of diseases.
Arrests
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 them to a sick customer in 1982. Associated PressAssociated Press
The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...
, United Press International
United Press International
United Press International is a once-major international news agency, whose newswires, photo, news film and audio services provided news material to thousands of newspapers, magazines and radio and television stations for most of the twentieth century...
, Reuters
Reuters
Reuters is a news agency headquartered in New York City. Until 2008 the Reuters news agency formed part of a British independent company, Reuters Group plc, which was also a provider of financial market data...
, and CNN
CNN
Cable News Network is a U.S. cable news channel founded in 1980 by Ted Turner. Upon its launch, CNN was the first channel to provide 24-hour television news coverage, and the first all-news television channel in the United States...
distributed stories about her arrests around the world, and brought her campaign to a wide audience, turning her grandmotherly visage into the public face of the American medical cannabis movement in the early 1990s and winning the movement a great deal of support and sympathy. Her publicized arrests contributed to the momentum behind public support for Proposition P and California Proposition 215.
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", however an undercover cop discovered what she was doing. On the night of January 14, 1981, the 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 plead guilty to nine counts of possession and received three years probation. The judge sentenced her to 500 hours of community service. Rathbun began working with the Shanti Project
Shanti Project
The Shanti Project is a non-profit human services agency based in San Francisco and founded in 1974 by Dr. Charles Garfield in Berkeley, CA. Its goals are to provide peer support and guidance to people affected by HIV/AIDS, cancer, and other life-threatening illnesses...
, a support group for people with HIV/AIDS. According to Dennis 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 street carrying a bag of brownies for her friend who was suffering from cancer when she walked right into the path of 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. Rathbun was taken to the city jail and held on multiple counts of possession and in violation of her probation.
Rathbun was arrested for a third time a decade later in Cazadero, California
Cazadero, California
Cazadero is an unincorporated town and census-designated place in western Sonoma County, California, United States with a population of 354 as of the 2010 Census. Nearby towns include Jenner, Annapolis, Stewart's Point, Duncans Mills, Villa Grande, Rio Nido, Guerneville, Monte Rio, and The Sea Ranch...
, 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
Medical necessity
Medical necessity is a United States legal doctrine, related to activities which may be justified as reasonable, necessary, and/or appropriate, based on evidence-based clinical standards of care. Other countries may have medical doctrines or legal rules covering broadly similar grounds...
, a defense that was first used successfully in a cannabis-related case by Robert Randall
Robert Randall (advocate)
Robert Randall was an advocate for medical marijuana and the founder of Alliance for Cannabis Therapeutics. He was also the first legal medical marijuana smoker in the United States. He documented his accounts in his book, co-written with wife Alice O'Leary: Marijuana Rx: The Patients Fight for...
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 notability 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 personally used cannabis to ease the arthritis pain in her knees. She purchased baking supplies for her brownies out of the monthly $650 check she received from Social Security. She was often seen wearing polyester pantsuits and was said to have a "sailor's mouth". Philosophically, she considered herself an anarchist and an atheist. She did not have any grandchildren.Death
Rathbun had been suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and osteoarthritis for some time before her death. She also had artificial knees and she was a survivor of colon cancer. By the spring of 1996, she was experiencing extreme pain and was no longer able to bake, and began losing weight. She told Dennis Peron that she was considering traveling to Michigan for physician-assisted suicide at the hands of Jack KevorkianJack Kevorkian
Jacob "Jack" Kevorkian , commonly known as "Dr. Death", was an American pathologist, euthanasia activist, painter, composer and instrumentalist. He is best known for publicly championing a terminal patient's right to die via physician-assisted suicide; he said he assisted at least 130 patients to...
.
In August 1998, she fell at her house and was admitted to Mount Zion Hospital for surgery on her neck and spine. She spent time at Davies Medical Center recovering from the operation with 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, a candlelight vigil was held in her honor in the Castro, with 300 people in attendance, including her friend, district attorney Terence Hallinan
Terence Hallinan
Terence Hallinan is an American attorney and politician from San Francisco, California. He is the second of six sons born to leftist attorney Vincent Hallinan and his wife Vivian....
.
Legacy
Rathbun's 1992 arrest was broadcast around the world on CNN. It caught the attention of her friend Donald Abrams, clinical professor at the University of California, San FranciscoUniversity of California, San Francisco
The University of California, San Francisco is one of the world's leading centers of health sciences research, patient care, and education. UCSF's medical, pharmacy, dentistry, nursing, and graduate schools are among the top health science professional schools in the world...
, and a physician at San Francisco General Hospital (SFGH). At the time, Abrams was in Amsterdam attending an AIDS conference and watched the news of Rathbun's arrest in his hotel room. Rick Doblin
Rick Doblin
Rick Doblin is the president and founder of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies .He co-founded Earth Metabolic Design Laboratories in 1984 to support psychedelic research and Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies in 1986 with the goal of making MDMA an...
, of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies
Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies
The Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies is a membership-based 501 non-profit research and educational organization working to develop psychedelics and marijuana into legal prescription drugs...
(MAPS), 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
Cachexia
Cachexia or wasting syndrome is loss of weight, muscle atrophy, fatigue, weakness, and significant loss of appetite in someone who is not actively trying to lose weight...
in AIDS patients.
Inspired by Rathbun's arrest, Abrams and Doblin began to collaborate 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
National Institutes of Health
The National Institutes of Health are an agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services and are the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and health-related research. Its science and engineering counterpart is the National Science Foundation...
with cannabis supplied by the National Institute on Drug Abuse
National Institute on Drug Abuse
The National Institute on Drug Abuse is a United States federal-government research institute whose mission is to "lead the Nation in bringing the power of science to bear on drug abuse and addiction."-History:...
.
Publications
- Rathbun, Mary; Dennis Peron (1996). Brownie Mary's Marijuana Cookbook and Dennis Peron's Recipe for Social Change. Trail of Smoke Publishing Co. ISBN 0963989200.
Further reading
- Associated Press (1992, November 15). "'Brownie Mary' to Defend her Special Recipe". The Telegraph (Nashua) , p. B4.
- Atcheson, R., & Mathison, D. (1995). "Proud Mary". Modern Maturity. 38 (6): 22.
- Herscher, E. (1992). "Brownie Mary Arrested In the Act of Baking". San Francisco Chronicle, p. A24.
- Palmer, C. (2008, March 21). "'SheShamans': An Illustrated History of Women and Psychedelics." World Psychedelic Forum.
- Pogash, C. (1992). As Real As It Gets: The Life of a Hospital at the Center of the AIDS Epidemic. Carol Publishing Corporation. ISBN 1559721278.
- Reed, C. (1999, May 20). "'Brownie Mary' Rathbun". guardian.co.uk.