PROFILE
Interview by Wes Abney | Photo by Daniel Berman
What Washington Can Learn from California Calvin Frye,45 : activist Medical Cannabis Pioneer & Documentary Producer
Calvin operates Cloneville Seattle and his flagship collective Compassionate Caregivers Studio City in Los Angeles. Last month he spoke by phone with Editor Wes Abney about the changing politics of medical marijuana in California and how Washington’s patients have to really unite together.
Northwest Leaf: How did you first become aware of Cannabis as medicine? Back in early 2005, I had a neighbor and friend who was diagnosed with cancer and his doctor recommended using MMJ. Believe me, back then MMJ was still a new term, a new idea. He found one of the few clinics, got access to medicine and it helped save his life.
Did that make you want to get involved helping other patients?
After he got well, I decided to open an [ac-
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cess point], though I didn’t believe that they could actually exist at the time. Sept. 1, 2005, I opened Compassionate Caregivers Studio City.
What was the environment like for medical marijuana in those early days? We were one of the first places to open up, and it was a hostile environment. It was an experiment, and we were under the Bush Administration. The other access points weren’t really united at that time either, but from that avenue more and more started opening up.