292. Sticky Fingers Brownies: Women, Weed, and the Birth of Medical Cannabis, part 1

2025-06-10

Before weed was legal in any U.S. state, it was medicine passed hand-to-hand—often in the form of a brownie. In part one of our Webby-nominated series Before Legal Weed, host Ellen Scanlon brings you the untold story of how San Francisco’s gay community turned to cannabis during the darkest days of the AIDS crisis—and how a woman-run cannabis operation called Sticky Fingers Brownies quietly became a lifeline. You’ll meet Meridy Volz, a mother delivering pot brownies on roller skates through the Castro in the 1980s, and her...

Before weed was legal in any U.S. state, it was medicine passed hand-to-hand—often in the form of a brownie. In part one of our Webby-nominated series Before Legal Weed, host Ellen Scanlon brings you the untold story of how San Francisco’s gay community turned to cannabis during the darkest days of the AIDS crisis—and how a woman-run cannabis operation called Sticky Fingers Brownies quietly became a lifeline.

You’ll meet Meridy Volz, a mother delivering pot brownies on roller skates through the Castro in the 1980s, and her daughter, author Alia Volz, who grew up watching a revolution unfold from the back of a stroller.

Through powerful personal stories and rarely heard history, you’ll learn:

How a women-run cannabis business became a lifeline for the gay community
What it was like to grow up in San Francisco during the height of the AIDS epidemic
Why this story still matters in today’s conversations around cannabis as medicine

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