{"id":7722,"date":"2018-02-02T14:13:54","date_gmt":"2018-02-02T22:13:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=7722"},"modified":"2018-02-02T14:13:54","modified_gmt":"2018-02-02T22:13:54","slug":"dennis-peron-california-activist-father-medical-marijuana-died-72","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2018\/02\/02\/dennis-peron-california-activist-father-medical-marijuana-died-72\/","title":{"rendered":"Dennis Peron, a California activist and \u2018father of medical marijuana,\u2019 died at 72"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Dennis Peron, leader of the campaign for Proposition 215 and founder of the Cannabis Buyers Club, right, smokes a marijuana cigarette next to Jack Herer of Los Angeles, in San Francisco in 1996. (Andy Kuno\/Associated Press)<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

By\u00a0Associated Press\u00a0January 29 (washingtonpost.com)<\/span><\/p>\n

Dennis Peron, an activist who was among the first people to argue for the benefits of marijuana for AIDS patients and who helped legalize medical pot in California, died Jan. 27 at a hospital in San Francisco. He was 72.He had lung cancer, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.<\/p>\n

Mr. Peron was a driving force behind a San Francisco ordinance allowing medical marijuana \u2014 a move that later aided the 1996 passage of Proposition 215 that legalized medical use in the state.<\/p>\n

He argued for the benefits of medicinal marijuana for AIDS patients as the health crisis overtook San Francisco. The Chronicle said the epidemic took his partner, Jonathan West, in 1990.<\/p>\n

Last year, a member of San Francisco\u2019s Board of Supervisors called him \u201cthe father of medical marijuana\u201d at an event honoring him last year.<\/p>\n

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FILE PHOTO: Marijuana activist Dennis Peron sits outside Oaksterdam University, a trade school for the cannabis industry, in Oakland, Calif. in 2009. (Robert Galbraith\/Reuters)<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cI came to San Francisco to find love and to change the world,\u201d Mr. Peron said in reply. \u201cI found love, only to lose him through AIDS. We changed the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

A Vietnam War veteran, Mr. Peron spent some of his last years on a farm in Lake County, Calif., growing and giving away medical marijuana.<\/p>\n

Born in the Bronx on April\u00a08,\u00a01945, and raised on Long Island, he called himself\u00a0in his published memoir<\/a>\u00a0a \u201cgay kid from Long Island who joined the Air Force to get away from home.\u201d<\/p>\n

After his discharge, he moved to a commune in San Francisco where he befriended Supervisor Harvey Milk and began selling marijuana.<\/p>\n

In 1991, Mr. Peron founded the first public cannabis dispensary in the country during the height of the U.S. drug war.<\/p>\n

He and a friend distributed pot to AIDS patients, got busted several times and was shot in the leg by a police officer, the newspaper said.<\/p>\n

The pot club served 9,000\u00a0clients before it was closed by a judge.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe city and the country has lost a cannabis leader who lived life on the edge,\u201d Terrance Alan, a member of the city\u2019s Cannabis Commission, told the Chronicle, \u201cHe lived his whole life on the edge, and that\u2019s what allowed us to lead in cannabis.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dennis Peron, leader of the campaign for Proposition 215 and founder of the Cannabis Buyers Club, right, smokes a marijuana cigarette next to Jack Herer of Los Angeles, in San Francisco in 1996. (Andy Kuno\/Associated Press) By\u00a0Associated Press\u00a0January 29 (washingtonpost.com) Dennis Peron, an activist who was among the first people… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7722"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7722"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7722\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7723,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7722\/revisions\/7723"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}