Milk and Peron’s collaboration in the Castro sowed the seeds of change: as one account put it, these activists and their friends “knew what too many still forget – the systems that criminalize queerness and cannabis use are one and the same.” In other words, both LGBTQ people and cannabis consumers faced stigma and criminalization, and both causes demanded justice and liberation. Prop 215’s victory was directly fueled by the compassion and courage of the LGBTQ+ community and their allies: as a recent Pride campaign aptly summarized, Prop 215 “would not have passed without the efforts of HIV/AIDS activists, many of them queer, who demanded compassionate access to cannabis as medicine.” These activists reframed the debate entirely: cannabis was no longer just about “getting high,” it was about quality of life, dignity, and care for people society was in danger of forgetting. “But it wasn’t until the visual effect of young white men dying in hospitals with AIDS that it shook the conscience of America and began to change the law.” In other words, the compassion shown to AIDS patients – many of them gay men – put a human face on the cannabis issue that the public simply could not ignore.
Author: Joseph Bondy, Chair, NORML Board of Directors
Published at: 2025-06-30 21:28:46
Still want to read the full version? Full article
