DENNIS PERON
Cannabis Club founder Dennis Peron inside his medicinal marijuana club on Market Street. By Brant Ward/Chronicle
DENNIS PERON,JACK HERER
FILE - In this Nov. 6, 1996 file photo, 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. Peron, an activist who was among the first people to argue for the benefits of marijuana for AIDS patients and helped legalize medical pot in California, died Saturday, Jan. 27, 2018, at 72. Peron was a driving force behind a San Francisco ordinance allowing medical marijuana a move that later aided the 1996 passage of Proposition 215 that legalized medical use in the entire state. (AP Photo/Andy Kuno, File)
Dennis Peron,Hazel Rodgers
FILE - In this April 21, 1998 file photo, Director Hazel Rodgers, right, of the newly formed San Francisco Cannabis Healing Center, places her hand on Dennis Peron, founder of the Cannabis Cultivators' Club and gubernatorial candidate, in San Francisco. Peron, an activist who was among the first people to argue for the benefits of marijuana for AIDS patients and helped legalize medical pot in California, died Saturday, Jan. 27, 2018, at 72. The San Francisco Chronicle reported that Peron died in a hospital in the city. (AP Photo/Ben Margot, File)
Dennis Peron at the San Francisco Cannabis Cultivators Club.
Dennis Peron at the San Francisco Cannabis Cultivators Club, Jan. 10, 1997. Peron, who openly dealt pot from his supermarket on Castro Street in San Francisco during the 1970s before leading a successful campaign to legalize medical marijuana in California two decades later, died Jan. 27, 2018, at a hospital in the city. He was 71. (Jim Wilson/The New York Times)
DENNIS PERON
Dennis Peron, founder of the Cannabis Cultivators Club, sniffs a marijuana plant in his club's growing room in San Francisco, on Jan. 1, 1997. The combative leader of San Francisco's largest medical marijuana club is set to challenge Attorney General Dan Lungren for governor in the Republican primary. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg)
DENNIS PERON
Founder of the Cannabis Cultivators' Club and gubernatorial candidate Dennis Peron, prepares a box carrying his personal belongings from his desk, including a marijuana plant, Monday, April 20, 1998, at the club on Market St, in San Francisco. The Sherrif's Department is expected to close the club sometime Monday, but the club plans to re-open by 5 p.m., under new ownership and a new name. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)
DENNIS PERON
CANNABIS BUYERS CLUB of San Francisco.
Chronicle Photo: Michael Macor
DENNIS PERON
Founder of the Cannabis Cultivators' Club and gubernatorial candidate Dennis Peron, raises a marijuana plant after he was evicted from the Cannabis Club by the San Francisco Sheriff Monday, April 20, 1998, in San Francisco. The club plans to re-open by 5 p.m., under new ownership and a new name. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)
The death of iconic medical marijuana activist Dennis Peron has received an outpouring of equal parts sadness and celebration for a lost legend of marijuana law reform.
The Vietnam War veteran, San Francisco resident and major figure in both the medical cannabis and gay rights movement died on Saturday at the age of 72 after a battle with lung cancer, reports the San Francisco Chronicle.
Peron was one of the first to recognize how cannabis benefited the health of those battling the AIDS epidemic of the ‘80s and ‘90s. Later scientific studies would confirm cannabis fights AIDS wasting by spurring appetite. Cannabinoids also slow the replication of immunovirus.
After losing his partner Jonathan West to the virus in 1990, Peron became instrumental in pushing for a San Francisco ordinance to allow medical marijuana use.
He would eventually establish the San Francisco Cannabis Buyers Club one year later, which is now considered to be the first American medical marijuana dispensary.
Those actions would become the impetus for Proposition 215, California’s medical marijuana initiative co-written by Peron that was approved by voters in 1996.
“I came to San Francisco to find love and to change the world,” Peron said while being honored by San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors last year. “I found love, only to lose him through AIDS. We changed the world.”
Proclaiming himself as a “gay kid from Long Island who joined the Air Force to get away from home” in his memoir, Peron credits the horrors he experienced during wartime for giving him the courage to come out of the closet and help others.
“They put me on the morgue for 30 days and I’m 20 years-old. I’ve never seen a dead person,” said Peron in a 2013 interview with GreenState’s David Downs. “That month I saw 25,000 dead people. I came out of my closet and found out who I was.”
The military deployment would also help launch Peron’s love for cannabis, as he was introduced to the plant while serving the Air Force in Vietnam.
“The people there catered to the GIs. We were a market for them,” Peron told Leafly’s Bruce Barcott in a 2014 interview.
He would end up taking some marijuana home to serve San Francisco’s then black market.
“I came back and kissed the ground. I was so happy—partly because I had two pounds with me. That started a career that would span 40 years,” Peron added.
The passing of a true harbinger of cannabis reform was celebrated throughout several social media platforms, including Twitter and Instagram.
“The city and the country has lost a cannabis leader who lived life on the edge,” Terrance Alan, a member of the city’s Cannabis Commission, told the Chronicle, “He lived his whole life on the edge, and that’s what allowed us to lead in cannabis.”
