Yvonne Westbrook
Yvonne Westbrook has been a supporter of the movement to legalize medical marijuana since discovering over twenty years ago that smoking pot was the only effective treatment for her debilitating symptoms of multiple sclerosis.  Following her diagnosis in 1979, she became increasingly involved with a growing community of seriously ill patients in San Francisco that smoked marijuana to relieve pain.  She began working at the San Francisco Cannabis Club, a now legendary community center run by Dennis Peron where patients suffering from illnesses such as multiple sclerosis, AIDS, cancer and blindness were able to buy and smoke medical marijuana in a safe and supportive environment.   Yvonne worked at the Cannabis Club as a hostess and budtender until the club was raided in 1996.  Her experiences there profoundly shaped her awareness of the devastating effects of terminal illness, and her conviction that marijuana provided real relief for seriously ill patients who had found prescribed pharmaceuticals to be ineffective.  She continues to remain active in the fight to legalize medical marijuana, traveling to Washington D.C. in 2001 for the Supreme Court case of the United States v. Oakland Cannabis Buyer’s Cooperative. Yvonne has been politically active since her youth in the Haight Ashbury section of San Francisco.  She was the first teenager to ever run for office in San Francisco, and received more than 50,000 votes for a position on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1971.