California Legalized Medical Marijuana 30 Years Ago. So Why Is Most of Its Cannabis Still Underground?

Prop 215 made California the first state to legalize medical cannabis 30 years ago this month. Ed Rosenthal, Ethan Nadelmann and Lanny Swerdlow look back on how it won and what it left unfinished.

“Remember, remember, the Fifth of November.” The line belongs to Guy Fawkes and his failed 1605 plot against Parliament, but in California the date marks a second anniversary. On Nov. 5, 1996, voters approved Proposition 215, the Compassionate Use Act, with 56% of the vote, more than 5.3 million ballots. One of them was cast by the author of this article.

Prop 215 made California the first state to legalize cannabis for patients with a doctor’s recommendation. It let patients and their designated caregivers grow the plant. It said nothing about where anyone was supposed to buy it.

That gap stayed open for years. Senate Bill 420 (yes, that was really its number), which took effect in 2004, let patients form collectives and cooperatives. In 2016, Proposition 64 legalized adult use. Once recreational sales began in January 2018, adults 21 and older no longer needed a costly, cumbersome recommendation to buy cannabis at a licensed dispensary.

Thirty years after 215, the legal market built on top of it is in crisis. A March 2025 report from the state’s Department of Cannabis Control found that only about 40% of the cannabis consumed in California comes from the licensed market. The unlicensed legacy market supplies the rest. The same report found that 54% of cities and counties don’t allow any type of cannabis business.

To look at what Prop 215 promised and what’s left of it, High Times talked to three people who were there or close to it: Ed Rosenthal, Ethan Nadelmann and Lanny Swerdlow.

How 215 Got on the Ballot

Ed Rosenthal, the High Times veteran of “Ask Ed” fame, spoke to us from India, where he is working to re-legalize cannabis. He started with his longtime associate Dennis Peron, the late medical cannabis activist who conceived Prop 215.

Ed Rosenthal. Photo: Jane Klein

“Dennis Peron wrote an initiative. I had nothing to do with the original writing committee; I wasn’t invited, but I happened to be a chairperson on a medicinal cannabis committee in Alameda County (in the East Bay). But after a year, the committee had still not come up with any wording. But Dennis wanted an initiative and started petitioning, because he had previously done an initiative in SF which won by a wide margin.”

That was San Francisco’s Proposition P, a 1991 measure calling on the state to legalize medical marijuana. It won 79% of the vote, an early sign of how much public support the idea had.

“I contacted Ethan Nadelmann of Drug Policy Alliance and told him I thought Dennis’ (statewide) initiative could win; polls showed we had the numbers; we just had to get it on the ballot. So Ethan contacted some of his ‘rich friends,’ like the guy who started Phoenix University (John Sperling). And George Zimmer (co-founder) of Men’s Wearhouse.”

Nadelmann was then running the Lindesmith Center, the drug policy institute that later became part of the Drug Policy Alliance. Sperling and Zimmer were among the wealthy backers who bankrolled the campaign.

“But Dennis initially told Ethan that they didn’t need his money, that the campaign was going fine. I went to Dennis’ house and vociferously told him that he was going to take the money, which we needed to pay petition gatherers. So Ethan was able to provide funding, and we gathered the signatures to put it on the ballot.”

Rosenthal also recalled Peron’s San Francisco Cannabis Buyers Club, which survived a 1996 raid before then-California Attorney General Dan Lungren shut it down by court order in 1998. Rosenthal compared what came next to a hydra: some of the club’s former patients went on to open dispensaries of their own. That, he stressed, came from people exercising their rights, not from the Legislature.

“I was ecstatic when Prop 215 won, but we thought (then-President) Clinton would do something, but he wasn’t interested. He smoked but never inhaled.”

Lanny Swerdlow is the founder and chair of the Brownie Mary Democrats, a chartered club of the California Democratic Party named for Mary Jane Rathbun, who was arrested three times for providing cannabis edibles to AIDS patients in San Francisco. Swerdlow was living in Oregon when Prop 215 passed. He moved to California in 2000 and quickly got involved.

Mary Jane “Brownie Mary” Rathbun, from the February 2021 issue of High Times. Photo: Peter Brooker / Shutterstock / High Times Archives

“My understanding of cannabis as medicine happened in 1995 when I became a caregiver for one of my close friends who had contracted AIDS, and this was a (heavyset) guy who had wasted away to next to nothing because of the disease’s ravages. He found that using cannabis would restore his appetite and keep his weight up. It helped him more than the cocktail of medications, which had negative side effects. So when California passed Prop 215 in 1996, I said, ‘Yes! We’ve got to see to it that people have access to cannabis.’

“When I moved to California, Palm Springs, in the year 2000, I organized a public seminar on cannabis, which we held in the Palm Desert Amphitheater. About 400 to 500 people attended, and that was my first meeting with Anna Boyce.”

Boyce is the retired registered nurse who helped lead the Prop 215 campaign, co-signed the official ballot argument in its favor and became one of its most visible faces. Swerdlow has been her friend for more than 25 years. She is no longer able to give interviews, so he told her story.

Lanny Swerdlow and Anna Boyce. Photo: Victor Michel

“I had heard about Anna and invited her to that Palm Desert cannabis seminar; she was delighted to attend, and she spoke at the seminar. Anna Boyce was a spokesperson and appeared in TV ads advocating Prop 215.

“She debated police officers and district attorneys; this little white-haired retired RN was in favor of Prop 215. I believe her presence and persona in the TV ads and news convinced a lot of people who were sitting on the fence to get out and vote for Prop 215.”

A Coachella Valley community forum flyer featuring Anna Boyce. Courtesy of Lanny Swerdlow

“The notion of setting up state-licensed dispensaries didn’t even occur to us in 1996; we thought it was impossible.”

Ethan Nadelmann

Ethan Nadelmann, who went on to found the Drug Policy Alliance, sat at the center of the campaign from the start. He knew Peron and grassroots activists like Debby Goldsberry. He also knew the money: Progressive Insurance’s Peter Lewis, Zimmer, Sperling and George Soros, donors who barely knew one another but shared sympathy for medical marijuana. And he knew Bill Zimmerman, a political consultant with experience running statewide ballot campaigns in California.

Ethan Nadelmann. Photo: Simeon Schnapper

Nadelmann confirmed Rosenthal’s account of Peron and Swerdlow’s read on Boyce. “It was true that there was no way that the major donors were going to put six figures of money into a ballot initiative that was not professionally run. And Dennis was seen as a Bay Area activist, whereas Anna Boyce was recruited by Bill Zimmerman to be the statewide face of the campaign since she was a retired medical professional to better win over swing voters.”

He sees 215 as the measure that made the other states possible. “I see Prop 215 as being monumental from a national perspective. It’s had its growing pains but also had the misfortune of being first, where you have to listen and learn. But the notion of setting up state-licensed dispensaries didn’t even occur to us in 1996; we thought it was impossible.”

From Prop P to Prop 64: A Timeline

• 1991: San Francisco voters pass Proposition P, urging the state to legalize medical marijuana, with 79% of the vote.
• August 1996: State agents raid Dennis Peron’s San Francisco Cannabis Buyers Club.
• Nov. 5, 1996: California voters approve Prop 215, the Compassionate Use Act.
• 1998: A court order shuts down the Buyers Club.
• 2004: Senate Bill 420 takes effect, letting patients form collectives and cooperatives.
• 2015: Gov. Jerry Brown signs the Medical Marijuana Regulation and Safety Act.
• Nov. 2016: Voters approve Prop 64, legalizing adult use.
• Jan. 1, 2018: Licensed adult-use sales begin.
• March 2025: A state report finds only about 40% of cannabis consumed in California comes from the licensed market.

What 215 Promised, and Where It Fell Short

Swerdlow didn’t soften his verdict. “The promise of Prop 215 was to allow patients to have access to cannabis with a doctor’s recommendation, but because there was no mechanism within 215 to provide that access, it failed miserably. And there was nothing done about it for eight years!”

Boyce, he said, was pragmatic about it. “Anna was never really in favor of adult-use legalization; but she wanted it medically available, so she was in favor of anything that would provide legal access to patients. She recognized that for many people, the only way (medical cannabis) was available was through the illegal market.”

“Prop 215 was written with the ‘Pollyanna attitude’ that did not address how patients were to obtain cannabis. I believe the drafters of Prop 215 thought that once it passed, the (California state) legislature would draft laws to make access available. Well, they didn’t, so people had to continue using the illegal market for the most part or try to grow their own.”

Prop 64 helped on one front and hurt on another, in his view. “Adult use (2016’s Prop 64) was successful in reducing the number of people arrested and prosecuted, but unfortunately the distribution mechanism for Prop 64 is horrid for allowing cities and counties to ban marijuana businesses, so California is full of ‘cannabis deserts’ where there are no marijuana businesses.

“So people either have to drive a great distance to some city where it’s legal or they continue to get their cannabis the old-fashioned way; they buy it on the illegal market, because of this provision that allows cities to ban it and because of the exorbitant taxes, along with the licensing and regulation system that makes it seem like it’d be easier to open up a nuclear power plant than a cannabis shop.”

Nadelmann credits 215 with “opening up an unprecedented dialogue between patients and physicians and prosecutors and municipal officials and law enforcement that has blossomed into what we see today, which is legal cannabis in half of (U.S.) states (generating) billions of dollars.” California alone has collected more than $1 billion in cannabis tax revenue every year since 2020, according to the Marijuana Policy Project.

He also sees the problems. “As a matter of good policy, it is a mistake to locally ban dispensaries and deprive counties of the opportunity to open cannabis storefronts. Unfortunately, in 2015, with the drafting of Prop 64, preventing municipalities and counties from having the power (to open dispensaries or not) would have made it much more likely that Prop 64 would have lost.”

Asked about solutions, he wasn’t optimistic. “California has the most deeply embedded and expensive legacy market in all of the USA, which makes it extremely difficult to do away with. Even SB 420 was not the comprehensive statewide regulatory framework you’d find in other (medical marijuana) states, such as New Mexico in 2007.”

Nadelmann recalled a conversation at a Prop 64 fundraiser with a legacy grower who called himself an “ethical grower,” someone who cared about the herbicides and irrigation he used. Most growers around him, the man said, “don’t give a f*ck; they don’t care where they’re dumping their chemicals.” He added that he “wouldn’t smoke a lot of the (cannabis) that my neighbors grow.”

“So it’s an issue of quality control, especially for heavy users and medical users who want cannabis that’s been grown in a relatively safe way; knowing it’s been tested by a state or local licensed agency makes a big difference,” Nadelmann said.

For Rosenthal, the promise was simple. “That patients were free from prosecution, that patients could get their medicine one way or another; they could grow it, they could buy it, or they could have their caregivers grow it for them. The way the initiative was written gave physicians a free hand as to deciding whether a patient was eligible to use medicinal cannabis.”

“It’d be easier to open up a nuclear power plant than a cannabis shop.”

Lanny Swerdlow, Brownie Mary Democrats

Rosenthal rejects the term “black market” and calls unlicensed sales the legacy market. That market has a harder edge, too. The state’s Unified Cannabis Enforcement Task Force seized an estimated $609 million worth of illegal cannabis in 2025, according to the state, and its raids have also turned up firearms. The task force says many illicit operations involve “unsafe working conditions, wage theft, and exploitation of vulnerable individuals,” and that their products “may contain toxic pesticides, mold, or contaminants.”

Taxes, he said, keep the legacy market in business. “But at the same time, with all the taxes that have been put on cannabis, it’s much easier for the legacy market to undersell the (licensed) market. People who are constant users, heavy users, are more likely to go to a legacy market because it’s far, far cheaper. What do you expect?”

Regulate It Like Alcohol

Swerdlow’s fix goes through the state constitution. “The distribution system is a total failure, and that’s what the Brownie Mary Democrats are working on; we’re trying to amend the California Constitution in the same way alcohol is regulated. The regulation of alcohol is actually contained within the Constitution of California, which means only the state can regulate alcohol businesses, and cities cannot ban it; they can regulate it, they can license it, and they can determine times of operation, but they cannot ban alcohol businesses in their communities.”

“So that’s why alcohol is found throughout California, and it produces impressive taxes for California, and there is no illegal alcohol market on the street corners because it’s widely available with reasonable taxation. It’s absurd; you’d almost think Prop 64 was written to keep the black market going.”

The California Constitution does put alcohol licensing in the state’s hands, though cities and counties keep zoning powers that can restrict where alcohol businesses operate.

Rosenthal’s prescription starts with taxes. “The more you lower taxes, the less incentive people have to go to the legacy market. Additionally, making the process easier for people to obtain licenses (to grow and sell). For instance, have sponsored ‘Farmer’s Markets.’

“I’m not saying cannabis products should not be tested, and yes, they should go through hygienic processes, but just make it easier for individual growers and sellers, like a small-based gummy manufacturer, to do that and not have to be a big corporation that has to jump through all the (regulatory and financial) hoops. Prices would go down, more people could be employed, and it would be taxed. It would keep more money in the communities where the products are being made and sold instead of going to big corporate cannabis. I’d also suggest a limit on the number of stores a given cannabis company can own and operate.”

Nobody can say how the fight between licensed and legacy cannabis in California will end. Until it does, Prop 215 stays what it has been for 30 years: the law that opened the door for the rest of the country, in a state that still hasn’t finished walking through it.