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Brownie Mary

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Advocate

The Resume

    (December 22, 1922-April 10, 1999)
    Born in Chicago, Illinois
    Birth name was Mary Jane Rathbun
    Waitress
    Volunteer at San Francisco General Hospital's Ward 86 (the AIDS ward)
    Medical marijuana advocate
    Founding member of the San Francisco Cannabis Buyers Club (1992)
    Campaigned for California Proposition 215 allowing patients to possess marijuana for personal medical use with a physician's recommendation (1996)

Why she might be annoying:

    She came from a conservative Irish Catholic family and said, 'Given my background and reputation and my adopted name, my poor old mother is surely turning cartwheels in her grave.'
    She said she 'came to California to chase men.'
    She had two short-lived marriages that ended in divorce.
    Long before she was giving pot brownies to AIDS patients, she was selling them to supplement her waitressing income.
    She said the police had insulted her when they listed 35 pounds of margarine as part of one bust: 'The narcs may not know any better, but that was the finest quality butter.'
    She refused to publish her recipe for pot brownies, saying she would sell it to Betty Crocker once marijuana became legal.

Why she might not be annoying:

    Her daughter Peggy died in her teens in a car crash.
    Fellow medical marijuana activist Dennis Peron said of her volunteer work, 'She adopted every kid in San Francisco as her own.'
    She was named Ward 86's 'Volunteer of the Year' (1986).
    After her high-profile arrest in Sonoma County she said, 'With all the attention the case has been getting, he [the prosecutor] is probably wishing I'd just go away. But I'm not going to.'
    She successfully argued for the right to wear a cannabis-leaf pin to her court appearances.
    Among the people attending a candlelight vigil after her death was San Francisco Distrcit Attorney Terence Halliman who said, 'She will one day be remembered as the Florence Nightingale of the medical marijuana movement.'

Credit: C. Fishel


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    In 2023, Out of 4 Votes: 25.00% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 4 Votes: 25.00% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 8 Votes: 87.50% Annoying
    In 2020, Out of 4 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2019, Out of 13 Votes: 46.15% Annoying
    In 2018, Out of 3 Votes: 0% Annoying
    In 2017, Out of 5 Votes: 40.0% Annoying
    In 2016, Out of 8 Votes: 62.50% Annoying
    In 2015, Out of 11 Votes: 90.91% Annoying
    In 2014, Out of 10 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2013, Out of 18 Votes: 55.56% Annoying
    In 2012, Out of 15 Votes: 66.67% Annoying
    In 2011, Out of 44 Votes: 54.55% Annoying