This year, Berkeley Patients Group (BPG), the oldest continuously operating dispensary in the United States, will celebrate its 25th anniversary.
It all started on Oct. 31, 1999, when several cannabis activists and patients decked out in Halloween costumes gathered on Fifth Street in Berkeley, and bought and sold medical marijuana. (Alas, they don’t remember what they wore.)
The dispensary was founded by Jim McClelland — a member of the Oakland Cannabis Buyers’ Cooperative (OCBC), who coined the term “Oaksterdam” — along with medical marijuana activists Don Duncan and Debby Goldsberry, a co-founder of the Cannabis Action Network. OCBC was shut down by the federal government in 1998, even though two years prior California voters had passed Prop 215, the Compassionate Use Act, which legalized medical marijuana in the state.
McClelland used marijuana to treat symptoms of AIDS, and chose the name Berkeley Patients Group, to stress the fact that it was intended for medical use. Etienne Fontan, an early member who is now co-owner of the dispensary, said the name was designed to gain the group sympathy in front of a jury “if we were busted.”
“Jim thought that [by] having ‘Patients’ in the name, [jurors] would hear Berkeley Patients Group every single time it was read in court and, hopefully, they would understand that we were patients,” Fontan said.
Fontan, a Desert Storm combat veteran, was among the activists dressed up that opening day in 1999 and joined Goldsberry and Duncan as part of the ownership team after McClelland died due to complications of AIDS in 2001.
“Originally our business license was ‘miscellaneous retail sales’ because back in ’99 there were no actual permits for cannabis,” said Fontan. “So when Don went down to get the permit, he asked for a miscellaneous retail permit, and they said, ‘Well, we need to know what you’re selling.’ And he said, ‘Well, medical cannabis.’ And they’re like, ‘Well, that’s miscellaneous enough.’”
Finding a home for the business proved harder. At first, BPG set up shop on Fifth Street, but while the city had amended its zoning ordinance in 1997 to allow for medical cannabis dispensaries, they were only allowed in commercial zones, not industrial. So in early 2000, BPG moved the dispensary to 2747 San Pablo Ave.
Thomas Heddleson, who began working at BPG in 2004 and wrote his doctoral dissertation in sociology on the medical marijuana movement, called it a “community hub.” “It was a kind of gathering space,” he said. “And that’s because we were one of the few dispensaries that allowed for on-site consumption.”
BPG also had massage therapists and acupuncturists and ran a hospice program where they would go to patients’ homes and provide them with medical marijuana.
“One thing about Berkeley Patients Group is that when people were at their worst, they would come there because they needed to feel better,” said Goldsberry. “So it wasn’t just about the cannabis, it was the community.”
Operating in a legal gray zone, BPG played cat and mouse with the federal government
But BPG was always keenly aware that they were operating in a legal gray zone — even though California voters had approved cannabis for medical use, it was still a Schedule I drug according to the U.S. government, and could not be used for medical purposes under federal law.
All of BPG’s employees at the time were activists, according to Fontan, and all of them anticipated being arrested during any given shift.
That legal gray zone became murkier in 2001, when the Supreme Court unanimously ruled in United States v. Oakland Cannabis Buyers’ Coop “that marijuana has no medical benefits worthy of an exception,” and that “medical necessity is not a defense to manufacturing and distributing marijuana.”
In response, the Berkeley City Council passed a unanimous resolution in 2002 directing the Berkeley Police Department not to cooperate with the Drug Enforcement Administration in medical marijuana cases. But BPG continued to face numerous threats from the Department of Justice. In 2007 the federal government seized BPG’s bank account assets, in connection with a DEA raid on the Los Angeles Patients and Caregivers Group, a dispensary with ties to BPG.
“I hope we can adopt a resolution calling for Berkeley to be a sanctuary city where patients can be safe from disruption from the Nazi tactics of the federal government,” Councilmember Darryl Moore told the Daily Planet at the time.
A resolution was passed the following year, “declaring the City of Berkeley to be a sanctuary for medical cannabis and calling upon the Berkeley Police Department to uphold the laws of the State.”
But the federal crackdown continued. In 2012 BPG was forced to move by federal authorities, led by U.S. Attorney Melinda Haag, who zeroed in on dispensaries located within 1,000 feet of schools, parks and playgrounds. “That’s a line I’ve decided to draw,” Haag told California Watch in 2012. BPG was near both the Center on Early Intervention on Deafness and Ecole Bilingue de Berkeley.
At this point, the ownership group consisted of Fontan and Tim Schick, who joined after Goldsberry left in 2010. Duncan left BPG in 2008. It wasn’t long before Fontan and Schick found a new location, just a few blocks away on a vacant lot at 2366 San Pablo Ave., a spot that used to house an A&W Root Beer stand.
“If you want to hear a miracle in the city of Berkeley,” said Fontan, “we took raw land to an open dispensary in five months.”
But Haag, who the East Bay Express called “medical marijuana’s public enemy number one,” was not done fighting BPG. She noted the dispensary was still operating within 1,000 feet of a home daycare center, and tried to close it on those grounds.
But in 2014, BPG got a reprieve when the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Rohrabacher–Farr amendment, which prohibited the Justice Department from using funds to prevent the implementation of state medical marijuana laws.
Legalization of recreational cannabis has brought its own challenges
In 2016, California voters passed Prop 64, the Adult Use of Marijuana Act, which legalized marijuana use for adults 21 and older. Sales of recreational cannabis began on Jan. 1, 2018.
Many Berkeley residents lined up on San Pablo Avenue before dawn on New Year’s Day to be among the first to legally buy recreational cannabis at BPG. “I’ve witnessed the tragic consequences of marijuana prohibition firsthand and am proud to represent a city that has been a leader and model example for regulation and reform in California as well as across the country,” Mayor Jesse Arreguín said after snipping a green-colored ribbon to officially kick off recreational sales at BPG.
That shift to recreational sales has brought a big shift in BPG’s customer demographic.
“We changed from seeing individual patients or caregivers to now seeing groups of people coming in,” said Fontan. “Kids with their parents, groups of friends.”
But the change in law, and the glut of cannabis in the market, has meant that price points and quality have plummeted, according to Fontan. Not to mention the various state and local taxes that dispensaries must pay.
“All of us are struggling,” he said.
But Fontan and his fellow cannabis activists fight on, and as the DEA is poised to reschedule marijuana from a Schedule I to a Schedule III drug, federal legalization is finally on the horizon.
That’s a fact that BPG and its activist founders played a big role in, according to Fontan. He recently spoke with representatives from the White House, State Department and Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement on the matter.
“We’re proud of our activist roots,” said Fontan. “Pioneering has been a challenge, but it hasn’t stopped us from caring about our patients, being ethical stewards and continuing to foster medical cannabis as this new horizon appears on us with rescheduling.”
“You had to be absolutely fearless to face local, state and federal pressures on a daily basis,” said Goldsberry. “Thank goodness those days are over. But it was also fun and we wouldn’t have done it if we weren’t actually enjoying our lives.”
H/T: www.berkeleyside.org
