In old Byzantium, by law the color purple was reserved for the
royal family; and any dealer in fabrics, the dyer, retailer or
the consumer who broke this sumptuary law could have his or her
head chopped off.

This was not the beginning of sumptuary law, but it's a good
starting point to illustrate the unbroken line between the
Byzantine rulers and state Attorney General Dan Lungren.

It isn't a straight line, for the practice of sumptuary
prohibition has existed over millennia and in all parts of the
planet. Since long before people began to record their lives and
times, there have been those who would tell others what they
could wear, what they could eat and drink, what they could
inhale. People such as Nero and Hadrian, Oliver Cromwell, Joseph
Stalin and Orrin Hatch, along with scores of popes and
Pentecostal preachers have tried to impose their wills and
opinions upon others. And it hasn't stopped.

Dan Lungren's promise or threat to close down the
voter-sanctioned medical marijuana outlets in California is only
his latest. The man has absolutely no understanding of, or
sympathy for democratic principles and ideas. Reason and expert
medical knowledge has no effect upon his determination to impose
his sumptuary restrictions upon those he intends to rule.
This man wants to be governor?

W. R. Jackson
San Francisco, CA