cannabisnews.com: Medical Pot Guru Ready for Sentencing 





Medical Pot Guru Ready for Sentencing 
Posted by CN Staff on June 02, 2003 at 19:09:36 PT
By Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer
Source: San Francisco Chronicle 
America's most celebrated drug defendant has spent what may be his final days before prison working quietly in his Oakland office, preparing his magazine columns and his next book about marijuana growing. No big send-offs. No wild parties for the icon of the medical marijuana movement. "I'd like to be a pop culture figure, but I don't think it's going to go that way," Ed Rosenthal said from Los Angeles, where he was attending a publisher's trade show over the weekend. "I'm dealing with constitutional issues and people's rights." 
Besides, Rosenthal said, he doesn't think he'll spend a day behind bars, despite prosecutors' request for a five-year sentence on his conviction for violating federal cultivation laws. "Once this goes into appeals, the laws will be changed and the conviction will be overturned," he said. Rosenthal, who grew marijuana for patients at a San Francisco dispensary, will go before a judge Wednesday for sentencing. His case has become a national symbol for the clash between state medical cannabis laws -- which allow patients to use the drug to relieve pain and ease debilitating effects of conventional therapies -- and the absolute federal ban on marijuana. The case is "a wake-up call to the nation about what's happening in California," said Steph Sherer, a medical marijuana patient and executive director of Americans for Safe Access, which supports the state laws and opposes federal intervention. "The people who are being targeted are people who are outspoken." Rosenthal is outspoken and high-profile -- in books and magazine articles, numerous interviews during and after his trial, and in the "Free Ed" billboard messages posted by local supporters since his conviction. But he's not exactly flamboyant. SOBER VIEWPOINT His latest book, "Why Marijuana Should Be Legal," co-authored with former drug defendant Steve Kubby, is not a summons to turn on, tune in and drop out, but instead is a sober look at what the authors consider the excessive social and financial costs of marijuana prohibition. NO TIMOTHY LEARY These are not the 1960s, and Rosenthal is no Timothy Leary. That may be why he and others like him are so irksome to John Walters, head of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. The marijuana movement activists of an earlier day wore long hair and tie-dye and the issue easy to defeat at the polls, as shown by the 2-1 vote against a 1972 California initiative that would have repealed criminal penalties for personal use of marijuana. Today's movement comes in the garb of AIDS and cancer patients and caregivers and seems to have won the support of the voters, if not their political leaders. Snipped:  Complete Article:  http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/06/03/ROSENTHAL.TMPSource: San Francisco Chronicle (CA)Author: Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff WriterPublished: Tuesday, June 3, 2003 Copyright: 2003 San Francisco Chronicle - Page A - 1 Contact: letters sfchronicle.comWebsite: http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/Related Articles & Web Site:Ed Rosenthal's Pictures & Articles http://freedomtoexhale.com/trialpics.htmKing of Pot Sees Growing Kingdomhttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread16494.shtmlFederal Persecution - New York Timeshttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread16464.shtmlGanja Guru -- If Only Truth Could Set Him Freehttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread16354.shtml 
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Comment #5 posted by jose melendez on October 25, 2003 at 11:57:04 PT
Notice: No arrests for foxglove, willow bark.
http://wiretap.area.com/Gopher/Library/Fringe/Pharm/essiac.txt
poison is legal, just not pot.
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Comment #4 posted by afterburner on June 02, 2003 at 23:30:29 PT:
FoM - In Case You Missed It
Cannabis Rubs Shoulders with Other Herbs http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread16484.shtml#4I used brewer's yeast and the following herbs to quit smoking tobacco 28 years ago:Christmas blend (I quit in December, shortly before Christmas): peppermint leaves, chamomile flowers, sassafras rootbark (not for sale in USA, prohibited by federal government for alleged cancer-causing qualities, gather your own, grows wild, leaves look like a mitten), and fenugreek seedsDetoxifier: burdock root, fennel seeds, and slippery elm bark.Pray for Ed Rosenthal and for U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer.10-4. Over and out.
Cannabis Rubs Shoulders with Other Herbs 
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Comment #3 posted by FoM on June 02, 2003 at 22:52:13 PT
afterburner
Before this pharmaceutical era plants were used as medicine. I believe in herbal medicine. I don't take many herbs anymore but I always take some everyday. Plants are the real medicine. At night I take 2 valarian and sleep very well. I even dream and remember them many times. With sleeping pills I never felt rested when I took them years ago.
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Comment #2 posted by afterburner on June 02, 2003 at 22:33:20 PT:
Make That Many Medicines Derived from Plants...
about 25%.
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Comment #1 posted by afterburner on June 02, 2003 at 22:28:22 PT:
From the Snipped Portion
Dr. Andrea Barthwell, deputy director for demand reduction, would say only that federal drug regulation was designed "to protect people from hack medicine" and that "it is an insult to our medical process to say that the best we can do is a smoked weed to help people who have terminal medical conditions." 
Most medicines are derived from plants, including for example aspirin derived from white willow or digitalis derived from common foxglove. A weed is only a plant or herb that we don't yet understand. Any federal "drug" officer who does not know this basic fact does not deserve the authority or the salary that goes with the office. Are patients and their doctors so deluded that they cannot judge the help medical cannabis gives in pain reduction and appetite increase? It is an insult to the medical profession and to the honor of the medical cannabis patients that this efficacious medical plant, used for thousands of years around the world and even in the USA until 1937, is demonized for political brownie points.ego transcendence follows ego destruction when politicians stop making health decisions and let the health care professionals treat the patients.
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