San Francisco Cannabis Buyers Club (Wikipedia)
The San Francisco Cannabis Buyers Club was the first public medical cannabis dispensary in the United States. Gay rights and AIDS activists were responsible for its founding and the larger success of the buyers club movement in the 1990s. Historically, the buyers club model emerged partly in response to the global pandemic of HIV/AIDS, and the failure of the U.S. government to allow the gay community and people suffering from other illnesses such as cancer, to legally use cannabis as palliative medicine. The club operated intermittently in at least three separate locations from 1991 to 1998, when it was permanently closed.