Proposition 215

Formally the Compassionate Use Act of 1996, adopted by California voters on November 5, 1996, with 5,382,915 votes in favor (55.6%) to 4,301,960 against. Codified as §11362.5 of the California Health and Safety Code, it was the first statewide medical cannabis law in the United States, permitting patients with a physician's recommendation and their designated primary caregivers to possess and cultivate cannabis for medical use, and shielding recommending physicians from state sanction. Its principal authors and proponents included San Francisco activist Dennis Peron (who founded the San Francisco Cannabis Buyers Club in 1992 and drew on his experience caring for AIDS patients with collaborator "Brownie Mary" Rathbun); psychiatrist Tod H. Mikuriya, the initiative's sole physician co-author and a longtime cannabis researcher; Dale Gieringer, director of California NORML; Scott Tracy Imler, founder of the Los Angeles Cannabis Resource Center; nurse Anna Boyce; attorneys William Panzer and Leo Paoli; and John Entwistle Jr. Late-stage funding from philanthropists George Soros, Peter Lewis, and John Sperling — coordinated by Bill Zimmerman and Ethan Nadelmann — financed professional signature gathering. Prop 215 catalyzed a patchwork of state medical-cannabis statutes and a decades-long federal-state legal conflict. Clarifying legislation followed in SB 420 (2003). (See Part 6 for the current California regulatory framework.)