EVERY JUNE, rainbow flags are flown in solidarity with the LGBTQ+ community. The colors light up buildings and landmarks, and companies from all sectors market products that celebrate Pride Month. While cannabis companies are no exception, they align much more authentically with Pride than others because of their deep connection to one another as long-time partners in the slow march toward acceptance. In fact, the legalization of medical (and adult-use) cannabis would never have been possible without the early adopters in the LGBTQ+ community who advocated for patient access to cannabis during the height of the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

I had a front row seat to the evolution of the medical cannabis movement while living with my father, who was gay, in the Castro District of San Francisco in the 1980s and 1990s. I moved in with him when I was in the 3rd grade, so he basically raised me in this district, an historically gay neighborhood and hotbed for LGBTQ+ activism.

I remember in the early days my dad and his partner Elmer would regularly host dinner parties at our home. These gatherings grew smaller over the years as funerals became more prevalent as their friends increasingly became sick and succumbed to the HIV/AIDS virus.

When Elmer – and my dad, a few years later – were diagnosed with the virus, they began using cannabis medicinally, perhaps without even realizing it. All they knew was that cannabis soothed their pain, increased their appetites, and decreased their anxiety.

However, while the therapeutic cred of cannabis grew within the LGBTQ+ community during this time, it wasn’t easy for AIDS patients to access the medicinal plant. It was still illegal then in California. Still, I watched as people across the community found creative ways to ensure their suffering friends and family members could get access to high-quality cannabis. I heard about Mary Jane Rathbun, an IHOP waitress in her 60s, who became known as “Brownie Mary” for passing out cannabis-infused brownies to AIDS patients at the local hospital.

I read about the work of fellow Castro dweller and gay activist Dennis Peron who’d been active in San Francisco’s underground cannabis communities for years. After he was arrested in 1990 for having cannabis in his home for his dying partner, Peron fought to change the law in California.

Proposition P, which passed in 1991, allowed doctors in the city to recommend medical cannabis to patients. Shortly thereafter, Peron opened a Cannabis Buyers’ Club, where people with AIDS and other wasting syndromes could purchase cannabis to help relieve the physical and psychological symptoms of their illnesses. These early battles for medicinal cannabis rights in the gay community were a true flash point in the legalization movement, ones that helped open the public’s eyes and minds to the plant’s benefits for terminally-ill patients.

It also led many of us to our life’s purpose. While in college, I took a trip to Austria, where I learned how to grow and cultivate cannabis, then returned to the Castro where I opened my first medical cannabis co-op with my dad that we named “Elmar Lins Compassionate Care Co-op,” after his partner.

Our co-op provided cannabis to local patients in hospice care and assisted living for almost a decade until my father passed away from the virus in July 2009 – just one year after Elmar’s death in 2008. Straight from my dad’s funeral, I flew to Colorado where my best friend Toby lived – he later became the COO/CFO of Good Chemistry Nurseries – and he told me about the new emerging market and the potential for the first state law that would regulate cannabis.

With my father’s passing and the excitement to operate in a state that passed the first historic cannabis regulatory framework legislation, I moved from San Francisco and started Good Chemistry Nurseries in 2010. I opened with one small cultivation and one store. Today we have expanded to three cultivations and four dispensaries in Colorado, and in 2018 we opened our first cultivation and dispensary in Massachusetts, followed by a second cultivation and dispensary in 2021.

Today, the cannabis industry has grown to an over $30 billion market, which means a lot of venture capitalists and Wall Street types have flocked to it on a mission to make a quick buck, but do not have a passion to produce quality flower.

Our mission, however, has always been guided by the impact cannabis had on my father and Elmer, and the overall Pride and cannabis legalization movements that I watched gain momentum throughout my childhood. We breed and cultivate our flower in small batches, where we can combine strains or enhance specific characteristics for a variety of therapeutic or medicinal purposes. As dispensaries continue to proliferate, they’d be wise – in the spirit of Pride – to pay homage to the spirit of the Castro District that delivered cannabis, comfort, and compassion to the LGBTQ+ community so many decades ago.

Matt Huron is the founder and CEO of Good Chemistry Nurseries.