Dear Editor;

California state Senator Vasconcellos has just touched the tip of the
iceberg of the problems with our national prohibition drug policy.

The dominant puritanical minority that controls the congress with
coercion, fear and the politics of personal destruction have also
subverted our federal courts. After the federal sentencing commission
proposed easing marijuana sentencing, the congress responded by
refusing to approve any more appointments to the commission. The last
member, Senior U.S. Judge Richard P. Conaboy of Scranton, Pa, left the
commission last October. The result is that the federal courts no
longer have the guidance of the commission and thus federal law and
the nations' courts are effectively subverted.

U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, in his 1998
Year-End Report of the Federal Judiciary, identified the failure of
the congress to confirm new appointments to the commission as the
number one problem facing the court.

Most judges fear rendering constitutionally consistent decisions
because these vindictive members of the congress will censure them.
While a censure won't remove a judge from the court it will foreclose
any upward mobility in the system.

Hence, there is no justice in the federal courts.

This is the judicial environment that Peter McWilliams is subjected
to.

If the state of California is to save the life of Mr. McWilliams it
should step in and take him into protective custody from the federal
prosecutors and provide to him the life saving marijuana that he needs
to stabilize and strengthen his body. The state should stand up to the
federal persecutors in the name of justice and protect their citizen
from a federal government gone mad.

Pat Rogers
Allentown, Pa.