MARY JANE RATHBUN, 77 OBITUARY

SAN FRANCISCO - Mary Jane Rathbun, an activist whose arrests for
distributing marijuana brownies to AIDS patients built momentum for the
medical marijuana movement, died at a hospital Saturday of undisclosed
causes. She was 77.

She had been hospitalized and in considerable pain since she injured her
spine in a fall last August, said her friend Larry Bittner.

Ms. Rathbun, who was known as "Brownie Mary," became a fixture at San
Francisco General Hospital in the early days of the AIDS epidemic, preparing
and delivering marijuana-laced baked goods to sick people to relieve their
nausea and pain.

"I think she made 134 dozen a month during the heyday, 1984 to 1990. All in
her little old kitchen in her subsidized apartment. And you could smell it
all through her building," said Dennis Peron, who with Ms. Rathbun founded
the now-defunct San Francisco Cannabis Buyers Club.

Ms. Rathbun was arrested three times and twice agreed to perform hundreds of
hours of community service, spending the time with AIDS patients, Peron said.

The arrests helped build support for San Francisco's Proposition P and later
the 1996 state initiative that made growing and using marijuana with a
doctor's permission legal under California law.

Ms. Rathbun had no survivors. She had a daughter who died in a car accident
in the 1970s.