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THE REBELLION AND ITS MARTYRS

The endless clash between state power and popular will has always assumed its most vivid contours in the matters of sex, booze and drugs.  Particularly in the last case the struggle concerns not merely pleasure but the suppression of pain.  The state protects pharmaceutical companies, who enjoy the highest profits in American business.  The state persecutes marijuana cultivators and suppliers, and, at the federal level, is trying to crush a nationwide rebellion by those who not only see marijuana as delightful and benign, but as of proven efficacy as a medicine for those for whom pain is a chronic condition. 

The rebellion has its many thousands of martyrs, rotting in state and federal prisons.  Its most conspicuous victim right now is Ed Rosenthal.  Come June 4, Ed Rosenthal will be back in U.S.  District Court in San Francisco to hear what sentence U.S.  Judge Charles Breyer has decided to impose.  Earlier this year, a California jury found him guilty of cultivating marijuana, of maintaining a place to cultivate marijuana and of conspiring with others to cultivate marijuana.  He's in his early 50s now, and he's looking at the possibility of being hauled off to prison for the rest of his life. 

Let's all hope that it won't come to that and that Breyer will stay his sentence, pending appeals that may end up in the U.S.  Supreme Court. 

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