In 1995, something surprising happened. A local chief of police in Marin County, California, asked Lynette Shaw to coffee. As an advocate for cannabis and the known purveyor of an illegal, underground cannabis club, she didn’t exactly make regular coffee dates with the law. The chief wanted to talk to her about AIDS. He had an officer down from working in the field, and apparently this officer wasn’t the only member of the police force silently suffering from what was still termed “the gay disease.” Even more surprisingly, he asked Shaw about cannabis brownies and how this man could medicate. The sick man was losing 25 pounds a month, and the Chief was looking for guidance. “I said, ‘If I were you, I would hand your patient some literature and turn a blind eye,’” she admitted. “I gave him my pager number, and he got back to me and said ‘The officer gained 30 pounds; he is much better, and I really believe this is something important.’”
Both cannabis users and AIDS patients were treated like criminals in the early 90s, but the kinship didn’t end there. Those suffering pain and sickness from AIDS discovered that cannabis healed them, and cannabis activists realized that they had a case for the medical properties of the plant they stood by.
A brave group of activists fought for cannabis access among AIDS patients, putting their freedom on the line as they supplied patients with cannabis while also lobbying for legalization. Many of these activists were queer men themselves, impacted by the AIDS crisis, and some were strong allies. Two of these activists, Lynette Shaw and Dennis Peron, dedicated their entire lives to bringing about change, and are largely responsible for the cannabis legislation we see today.
Peace, Love, and Cannabis
Shaw’s relationship with cannabis began long before she became an activist.
“The hippie revolution hit when I was 12 years old, and I grew up in California, very close to Haight Ashbury,” she explained. “Marijuana was just everywhere—everywhere. In 1969 I was 14 years old, and, coming from a very low-income family, I started selling pot. In that era a girl couldn’t mow lawns or have a paper route; I couldn’t even wear pants to school. I didn’t have any legitimate way of earning an income.”
She soon began smoking cannabis, partially to cope with undiagnosed depression. Her father, who worked for the IRS, gave her an ultimatum and threw her out of the house when she refused to quit medicating.
Out on her own at a young age, Shaw relied on the only talent she could to make ends meet: her musicianship.
“I sold pot on the side and was a professional singer in the hotel circuits,” she said.
Shaw eventually ended up playing music in Hollywood, where she befriended John Belushi and became a backup singer for the Blues Brothers. She was selling cannabis to Belushi during the late 70s, at the height of the drug war. In fact, she was trying to help him get off of hard drugs.
She then entered the darkest period of her life, running with and selling cannabis to the Hell’s Angels, and when they grew tired of her company, falling into a state of amnesia and getting hospitalized. Shaw could not read or write, she didn’t remember who she was, why she was depressed, what had led to this point in her life. The only thing she could do was play the classical piano.
“So I started playing again, and then I found some pot on the junior college campus and started smoking pot again,” she said. “I couldn’t remember why, but even though I was very ill, as soon as I found pot I started getting better.”
Slowly, she began to heal. Shaw once more picked up music, this time reggae and jazz instead of blues. She also started dating again, and her new boyfriend was an activist and Vietnam vet.
His connections to the underground cannabis scene ended up changing her life when he introduced her to the legendary activist Jack Herer.
Herer taught her about hemp and the concept of medical cannabis. Shaw realized that she had been medicating with cannabis for most of her life. This epiphany flipped a switch, and she decided to dedicate her life to trying to legalize cannabis and helping folks heal with the plant.
Enter Dennis
From there she was introduced to Dennis Peron, a gay activist who was heavily involved in both the San Francisco queer rights movement and the cannabis rights movement. She wanted to make a difference, but no one could be prepared for the magnitude of the problem at hand. Peron gave her a job doing intake into his cannabis club, the San Fran Cannabis Buyer’s Club in the Castro, one of the very first illegal, underground medical cannabis clubs.
Shaw did more than 6,000 intakes in her first five years. Although she was traumatized and still very much in her shell, she learned a little more every day about cancer, AIDS, Lupus, and other illnesses while she was training. She kept a medical book by her side at all times so that she could look up anything she didn’t know, literally learning during face-to-face sessions with patients. Rather than focusing on the fact that she was working at one of the first cannabis clubs in the country and actively making history, she was focused on day-to-day healing.
Meanwhile, as she worked to heal the community, Peron also needed help changing the public perception of cannabis. At the time, the media and the law were too close-minded to accept a bunch of queer folks, many of whom were HIV-positive, speaking up for cannabis rights. But Shaw would make the perfect woman in the limelight of legalization.
“Dennis said ‘You may be straight, but you’re alright with me; here’s some money; go get some heels, a power suit, a jacket, short skirt, and push up bra—we are going to take you to Sacramento.”
Shaw was tasked with bringing women who were HIV-positive, and also often disabled, to speak to senators about the AIDS crisis and cannabis reform. Peron would bring a group of men in to see politicians so that they could cover more ground. The goal was to hold nothing back: make the senators cry to get their vote.
“This is how we ran our senate bill, door to door, tear by tear,” Shaw explained. “We would all smoke a bunch of pot before we went into the state capitol, then we’d go into the capitol to make the senators cry. Dennis called this ‘the unfortunate dog and pony show.’”
During this time, despite the grueling and unusual work and immense pressure, Shaw also worked on herself. Her PTSD was diagnosed; she started seeing a psychiatrist and a medical doctor; she got off of the pill she was taking for mental health issues, kept using cannabis medically, and was able to work seven days a week for the cause.
In addition to fighting for patient access and providing cannabis, she and Dennis did condom giveaways and a needle exchange. Eventually, she branched off and started her own underground cannabis club in Marin County, leaving Peron’s home base in the Castro.
Hope in Sight
As all of this was happening, cannabis was still illegal but was beginning to be more socially accepted. Shaw was profiled in the paper for running an underground cannabis club. The piece actually gained her more customers instead of getting busted. One AIDS patient was busted and had plants confiscated, and the media highly publicized the event.
This is when she was invited to coffee with the chief of police.
Eventually, the chief vowed to sign a petition and promised he would encourage others to vote ‘yes’ on the legendary Proposition 215, the 1996 legal ruling that granted medical cannabis in California. Furthermore, the police chief encouraged Shaw to try and operate her underground cannabis club under legal guidance.
“Someone in his extended family was sick, and he said he had more officers down,” she explained. He wanted there to be a legal place for officers to get more medical marijuana. He asked if I knew what a permit was, explained that I was going to need a business license and it was going to take a permit.”
The chief of police had a list of rules in mind for the fledgling dispensary system, but many of them violated HIPPA and ADA regulations. Shaw realized that if medical cannabis was going to become a reality, there still had to be a system in place that respected patient confidentiality and medical records. She came back to the chief with a revised set of rules, and together, they worked out a system that honored both the law and patient privacy.
Shaw became the first legally-licensed cannabis seller in America. Because her victory came so early, she was sued by the Clinton administration and had her license suspended, and a federal tail placed on her for years, since she was unwilling to give up information about growers or those in the underground. However, she avoided getting raided because of the double jeopardy clause of being sued and because she always followed the letter of the law when it came to the regulations that she helped draft. Eventually she got her dispensary back, and now she is able to continue to do what she loves: sell cannabis to those who need it.
Peron continued to fight for both cannabis legalization and LGBTQ rights. Despite losing his partner to AIDS in 1990 and seeing many friends pass away, he remained positive and determined to fight and help those in need.
A Happy Ending
On January 27, 2017, Peron passed away after a long battle with lung cancer. The cancer didn’t come from cannabis, but from a lifetime of loving cigarettes and being too stubborn to quit. Shaw will continue to spread the word about his good work, helping his family with media and the memorial, and helping cannabis patients every day. Many remember Peron fondly for the courageous, and often thankless, work he did during the AIDS crisis.
“One of the things we all shared is compassion, and that was what guided us,” explained cannabis patient and fellow activist Wayne Justmann, a good friend of Peron’s. “We cared about the wellbeing of other people. Dennis of course was affected by the AIDS crisis, and I myself being 30 years HIV-positive, I care about people who not only suffer from this illness, but from other illnesses that cannabis can help. We found out that the plant cannabis was necessary to take the chances that we used to educate society; it should be made available for those that want to use it, and that’s exactly what we have done and continue to do, Lynette with her wonderful work in Marin and her advocacy. Now that Dennis is gone we need to continue to get his message out, and that’s what we are going to do. It’s an easy message because it’s a message of caring for one another.”
Despite all the work they did, the AIDS crisis is far from over. Hiv.gov estimates that over 1.1 million people in the U.S. live with HIV today, and despite programs like PreP and Truvada, around 37,600 Americans became affected in 2016. Young people, people of color, and folks from underprivileged areas are still at major risk.
However, it is an option for many of those people to medicate with cannabis, in addition to taking drugs that help keep their symptoms at bay. Cannabis helps with weight loss, nausea, and vomiting, and studies show that it doesn’t have an adverse effect on the immune system and is safe to use for those with compromised immunities.
It is because of the dedicated work of Shaw, Peron, and their associates in the Castro and in Marin county, on the streets during the early days of the drug war and the AIDS crisis, that medical cannabis patients have many of the options they do today. Peron’s contributions will not be forgotten, and Shaw and other activists will continue to carry out his good works.
LINK: https://www.outfrontmagazine.com/front-lines-queer-cannabis-fueled-legacy-dennis-peron-lynette-shaw/