Dennis Peron

Dennis Robert Peron (April 8, 1945, The Bronx – January 27, 2018, San Francisco), widely called the "father of medical marijuana." A U.S. Air Force veteran who served in Vietnam during the Tet Offensive, Peron returned to San Francisco in 1969, settled in the Castro District, and became a Yippie-affiliated cannabis dealer (the "Big Top" supermarket operated from his Castro Street apartment) and political ally of Harvey Milk. He authored Proposition W (1978), a San Francisco measure directing the district attorney to deprioritize cannabis cases. The AIDS epidemic redirected his activism toward medical access. After his partner Jonathan West used cannabis to manage AIDS wasting and died in 1990, Peron organized San Francisco Proposition P (1991), a nonbinding measure urging state-level medical cannabis recognition, which passed with roughly 79%. He founded the San Francisco Cannabis Buyers Club (1992), widely considered the first openly operating U.S. medical cannabis dispensary, which at its peak served approximately 8,000 AIDS and cancer patients. With Dale Gieringer, Scott Imler, Valerie Corral, and Tod Mikuriya he co-authored California Proposition 215 (1996), the first successful U.S. state medical-cannabis law. He later opposed Propositions 19 (2010) and 64 (2016) because he viewed taxation and commercialization as incompatible with cannabis-as-medicine — a principled dissent that presaged later tensions between legacy growers and the regulated market.