Meet the woman who was jailed 3 times for bringing cannabis brownies to AIDS patients
In photographs, she looks like a scout leader about to ask if you’ve had anything to eat today. It takes a moment to see that often, just out of focus, her fingers are holding a joint and her vest is covered in risque pins, including an embroidered cannabis leaf.
Mary Jane Rathbun, jailed thrice and the reason for California’s groundbreaking action on medical cannabis, was better known as Brownie Mary, the patron saint of AIDS patients.
More than twenty years after her death, it’s not hard to understand why this grandmotherly figure remains one of San Francisco’s most beloved activists.She’s been called the Florence Nightingale of HIV/AIDS.
She was famous for bringing her magic brownies to gay men and others suffering from wasting syndrome, a name for the deleterious effects on appetite caused by the stigmatized retrovirus.
