The pictures below (courtesy of Chris Conrad) are from September 2002. At least a thousand protestors gathered at the state and federal buildings in Sacramento on the sentencing day of Brian Epis, a marijuana grower who was convicted of, well, marijuana growing. Unfortunately, because the prosecutor and judge withheld certain evidence from the trial, the jury had no idea that Epis was growing the plants entirely for medicinal use by ill patients, and legally under California law (but not under federal law).

At the time, I was reading Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do: The Absurdity of Consensual Crimes in Our Free Country by the late Peter McWilliams. The book criticized the U.S. government's laws against behaviors such as homosexuality, drug use, and prostitution. At the rally, I saw signs in memory of the author. I wasn't aware that he was dead. I didn't even know he had been a medical marijuana patient. And I sure as hell didn't know that the feds had dragged him into a case like that of the one we were protesting against that day. Like Brian Epis, McWilliams was denied a medical defense in court. He wasn't allowed to use his medicine anymore either and, two months before his sentencing date, choked to death from his own vomit. Marijuana had been the only effective remedy against his nausea. The saddest coincidence for me was that I was almost finished with the book and had brought it to read during the bus ride to Sacramento that morning. Just minutes before learning about McWilliams' tragic death, I had reached Hemp for Victory, one of the last chapters in his book in which he discusses the industrial benefits of marijuana cultivation.

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