Posted June 16, 2000
Analysis By Richard Cowan

Peter McWilliams, 50, best selling author, poet, photographer, publisher,
libertarian crusader, medical marijuana activist, AIDS patient and cancer
survivor, was found dead on the floor of his bathroom, apparently having
choked to death after vomiting, for want of medical marijuana.

There will be an autopsy, but whatever the immediate cause of death may have
been, he was murdered by the United States Government as surely as if they
shot him. Indeed, it would have been much more humane if they had just put a
bullet in his head. No one should have to go through what he suffered at the
hands of his country.

When I learned of his death yesterday, I was too angry to write about it.
Even now, this is being written more in anger than in sorrow. Peter is where
they can¹t hurt him anymore, but his murderers are still at large, and if
there is anything that Peter would want, it would be for us to continue to
speak the truth to power, to tyranny.

Of course, if Peter did choke after vomiting it would be directly the result
of his having been denied the right to use medical marijuana. Peter was a
part of the roughly 40% of those patients for whom the anti-viral drugs
being used to treat AIDS can cause violent nausea. The government knew this
from direct observation. During at least one court appearance he vomited
into a wastebasket during the hearing.
See How the Government Helps Medical Marijuana Patients:
"McWilliams vomited repeatedly in court Friday, prompting
guards to keep a trash can nearby."

Dealing with this nausea is one of the best documented uses of medical
marijuana, and he had also used it during cancer chemotherapy, when he
actually gained weight.

None of that mattered to the judge. None of that mattered to the prosecutor.
After all, these are the same people who had held him in federal detention
for months on a $250,000 bail, even though he posed no flight risk, the only
justification for such a high bail.
See Peter McWilliams Still Held on $250,000 Bond;
Denied AIDS Medication For Four Days!!! Two Stories

Had he wanted to flee, he had plenty of time to do so before he was charged,
but he is a world famous writer, so he could not hide. His publishing
company was there in Los Angeles, and he was taking expensive anti-virals
for AIDS. He really could not flee, but that did not prevent the government
from violating his Constitutional rights.

Consider the lengths to which they went to keep him from raising the bail.

When his elderly mother pledged her house as security for the bail, they
threatened that the government would seize her house if her son simply
failed a drug test, not just if he were to flee. She would not be
intimidated, but now her son is dead as the result of the conditions of the
bail. These are the "family values" of America¹s war on the sick and dying.
See "The federal prosecutor personally called my mother to tell her that if I
was found with even a trace of medical marijuana, her house would be taken away."
              -- Peter McWilliams

During his incarceration, his AIDS viral load, which had been "undetectable"
soared to dangerous levels. Peter was also very fragile psychologically.
Aggravated by his health and legal problems, he often suffered from
debilitating bouts of depression. Certainly, he was badly damaged by being
in federal detention, and he knew from that experience that he could not
survive very long if he were sent to prison. Thus, even if the immediate
cause of his death were AIDS, or even suicide, the guilt for his death lies
squarely at the door of the Justice Department and the Federal Courts, and
the United States Government as a whole.

If an individual did what the federal government did to Peter McWilliams,
deliberately deprive him of medicine that would save his life, that person
would be indicted for murder. And this was murder. Moreover, it was
premeditated, and a part of a pattern of the criminal abuse of power.
Consider the evidence.
See Federal Judge Rules Peter McWilliams Cannot Use
Medical Marijuana -- Even to Save His Life! --
"They¹re just going to let me die."

First, Peter would want us to remember that he was merely the most famous
victim of a campaign against the most vulnerable members of our society, the
sick dying and disabled for whom marijuana is the only effective ­ or
affordable ­ medicine.
See A Message From Peter McWilliams, Prisoner Of The War On The Sick And Dying

Many others are suffering anonymously in our vast prisons, underfunded
hospices, and dark little rooms in the slums in our shining cities. Many
others use medical marijuana, but live in fear of their government while
doing so. And they have no choice. Tens of millions of Americans ­ and
countless millions around the world -- have no health insurance to pay for
the expensive pharmaceuticals, even if they worked as they are supposed to.
See AIDS and Medical Marijuana: On World AIDS Day
Why Is No One Talking About the Cheapest Way To Help The Most People?
Analysis By Richard Cowan

Peter¹s case happened in California, the first state where the people had
passed an initiative, specifically designed to prevent just this sort of
cruelty. Following its passage, the Federal government and its allies among
the federally subsidized state narcotics police have done everything to
prevent its effective implementation. This effort continues even now.
See Even In The State Capital, California Narks Violate Prop 215 & the
Attorney General Won¹t Do His Duty.

However, Peter made the mistake of thinking that the law meant what it said.
He wanted to provide others with the knowledge to be able to grow their own
medicine. Although the government waited for awhile to arrest him, they did
so with their usual pointless show of force. A large number of heavily armed
men ransacked his house very early one morning, after handcuffing Peter.
They seized his computers and ultimately destroyed all of his work in
progress. Naturally, it was about medical marijuana.
See Best Selling Author / AIDS-Cancer Patient Peter McWilliams
Launches Medical Marijuana Press; Risks Federal Imprisonment in Doing So
and Statement Of Author Peter McWilliams To Institute Of Medicine Medical
Marijuana Hearings

A few days before Peter¹s death, there was a fire in his home office that
again destroyed all of his work in progress. I have no doubt that such a
loss broke his heart and hastened his death. Several people have asked me if
I suspected the government of having started the fire. My answer was simply
that I have no idea, but given the theft of his work before, and the general
depravity of their behavior, and given the fanaticism of the opposition to
medical marijuana by both the federal government and the California narks,
it is not an unwarranted suspicion.
See California Narks Lie to Justify Disobeying Prop 215. And They Lie About Me
In The Process.

In order to justify the suppression of medical marijuana it has become
necessary to demonize the medical marijuana users. If medical marijuana has
to be a "crock" to use the Drug Czar¹s inelegant phrase, then outspoken
medical marijuana advocates like Peter must be dehumanized.
See Czar Calls Medical Marijuana "A Crock." He Doesn¹t Know Anything About
Medical Marijuana, But He Does Know Crocks.
and Dying AIDS Patient Peter McWilliams Demands Drug Czar McCaffrey Implement
Medical Marijuana Recommendations of National Academy of Sciences Institutes
of Medicine Report

In fact, the "evil" of which he was originally accused was a conspiracy to
provide medical marijuana. Think about that, a conspiracy to provide the
sick and dying with something to help them in a state where the people had
voted for just that. What a crime!
See The Feds Drop The Other Jackboot; Indict Peter McWilliams, Todd McCormick
and Others, Alleging Vast Conspiracy To Supply Medical Marijuana
and Libertarian Party Says Peter McWilliams Is Victim of Efforts To Discredit
Medical Marijuana

The federal government began by denying the relevance of the state law,
despite the 9th and 10th Amendments. However, when it realized that a
"medical marijuana conspiracy" would raise issues that might make it
difficult to get a jury to convict a person with AIDS, they changed the
charges and simply accused him of conspiracy simply to grow marijuana.

Then they moved to deny him the right even to mention having had cancer and
AIDS or make any reference to medical marijuana. This denied him the
Anglo-Saxon common law right of claiming a "necessity" to break the law,
because doing so prevented a greater harm. Surely growing a plant that saved
your life would be such a necessity.

This might be called the fully uninformed jury strategy. It nullified the
jury¹s right to know the facts of the case. Peter would not be the only
victim of such an action. The jurors would have been unwittingly used to
justify an evil that would be committed in its name. There is something
especially terrible about involving innocent people in the commission of a
crime to pass the moral responsibility on to society as a whole.

Thus, to prosecute a dying man for plotting to grow a plant, the federal
government trampled on the laws of California, the Bill of Rights, and
Common Law. What is the end that would justify such means?
See Buckley Denounces Prosecution of McCormick and McWilliams In Strongest Terms
Yet. "On the eve of the trial Judge King decided, so to speak, to eliminate the
Bill of Rights."

Confronted with the inability to defend himself, Peter had no choice but to
take a "plea bargain," such as it was, and so he confessed to the crime of
having hoped to make money in America.
See McCormick and McWilliams Plead Guilty to Avoid Ten Year Minimums.
and Judge Rules Against Medical Necessity Defense For McCormick and McWilliams
There Cannot Be Even a Mention of Medical Marijuana! Defies 9th Circuit
Ruling. Press Release From McCormick and McWilliams

None of the norms of the various traditions that make up America seem to
apply when the subject is marijuana, so Peter¹s confessing to a profit
motive, the most American of motives, was seen by the government as
vindicating the persecution of a dying man.

Righteously triumphant, the prosecution would offer nothing better than
letting him throw himself on the mercy of the court in hopes of not having
to serve five years. Given his fragile health, the prosecution could have
agreed to probation or even house arrest, but they were opposed to the judge
showing more "mercy" than they had. Through all of this the judge has been
craven in protection of the most basic rights and denied all of the
defense¹s key motions. But he was Peter¹s only hope. Now we will never know
if there was any shred of decency or mercy behind the black robes of his
executioner.

But never mind these little players who personify Arendt¹s phrase, the
banality of evil. Before there can be any justice from them or for them, we
must take back America from the prohibitionist police state that has
highjacked it in what has rightly been called a "slow motion coup d¹etat."
See The Theory and Practice of Treason. -- 2 Items

It still seems bizarre to me, even after all these years, that marijuana
prohibition ­ the suppression of a plant, and especially the suppression of
the medical use of a plant -- could be the motive and justification for the
total betrayal of all that Peter McWilliams believed, the freedom of
American. It seems even more bizarre that the people of America have let
this happen.

However, thanks to the bravery of people like Peter and other medical
marijuana users, the American people are finally waking up to what is
happening. Marijuana prohibition is going to end. How fast it ends will
determine not only how many more tragedies like the murder of Peter
McWilliams there will be, but also how much more damage is going to be done
to the system and elites that perpetrated this massive fraud -- or just
allowed it to happen. There could be nothing more "conservative" than ending
marijuana prohibition tomorrow.

However, for each of us, the moral case is very simple. To witness a crime
in silence is to commit it. If we are silent on the murder of Peter
McWilliams, and all of the others whose suffering and death pass without
notice, then we are as guilty as the judge, prosecutors, and politicians,
and police who signed the papers that ultimately became a warrant for
judicial murder. Silence would also make us complicit in the betrayal of the
traditions and values that should have protected Peter and all the others.

The persecution of the sick and dying must end. And the system that
perpetrates it - -- marijuana prohibition -- must end.

This is a time of profound moral crisis. Peter McWilliams is dead. Are you?
See Peter McWilliams On Non-Violence: "Socrates, Jesus, and Martin Luther King
did more for their causes by dying for them than by killing for them."
and "It is the love of freedom, not the hatred of tyranny,
that will turn this warring parent into an adored embrace."
-- Peter McWilliams