I grew up in an underground cannabis bakery during the AIDS epidemic. Yes, it is essential medicine

No one is suggesting cannabis as a treatment for novel coronavirus. That doesn’t mean dispensaries should close now

I grew up in an underground cannabis bakery. During the ’70s, my family baked and delivered more than 10,000 marijuana brownies per month in San Francisco. My mom dealt brownies out of my stroller in the Castro district, with weekly stops at Harvey Milk’s campaign headquarters and the home of the singer Sylvester. Sticky Fingers Brownies began as party favors at the height of disco extravagance and then changed along with the city. Deliveries continued through the depths of the AIDS crisis and the dawn of medical marijuana.

By the time my mom closed her business in the late ’90s, cannabis was no longer considered a party drug. Today, several locales are allowing cannabis dispensaries to operate with modifications during COVID-19 closures.

In San Francisco, a tweet from the Department of Public Health describing cannabis as an “essential medicine” was met with a long comment thread full of predictable stoner humor and finger-wagging about drug use. “Very sad that a Department of Health would promote marijuana as an ‘essential medicine,’” one commenter tweeted. “Do you also promote alcohol and tobacco?” Another quipped, “Pot smokers celebrate ‘essential medicine’ rule by sharing legal bong hits in illegal drum circles. ‘Dude, you can’t tell us not to have drum circles. Like, that’s unconstitutional.’”