By William F. Buckley, Jr.
Published Feb. 24, 1999

Having been once postponed, the hearing of Peter McWilliams of California is now scheduled for this week. It is arousing high drama, not in the least discouraged by the defendant McWilliams, who is a skilled writer and dramatist.

The U.S. attorney in Los Angeles intends to recommend that McWilliams spend the next 10 years in jail for violating federal drug laws, more specifically, marijuana laws. Peter McWilliams wonders very much out loud (in regular communications to press and friends) whether he can survive what he is being put through whether he is jailed or not.
See
September 7^th Trial Date Set For McCormick and McWilliams;
McCormick Bail Revocation Hearing Set For March 17.

The narrative is as follows. McWilliams, a 48-year-old author of 30 books on how to understand computers, poetry and human life, contracted AIDS and fell victim to cancer in 1996. He submitted to such treatment as there is but got relief mostly from marijuana. The California proposition (215) that in 1996 authorized doctors to prescribe marijuana for patients in special circumstances encouraged McWilliams to endorse the planting of the weed by a partner, and he was less than discreet about this activity. He reasoned that if California laws authorize the prescription of marijuana, patients have to have access to marijuana.

The feds take the position that the California proposition is after all overridden by federal legislation. They have always scorned 215, for reasons good and bad. There is no concealing that the heaviest backing for the proposition was from people who simply don’t believe marijuana smoking should be proscribed and if that’s what you think, the best foot in the door is an OK for the medical use of the drug.
See
Is medical marijuana just the opening wedge to legalize marijuana generally?

There is no reason to doubt the sincerity of such as McWilliams when they insist on marijuana’s distinctive therapeutic properties for them; on the other hand, if the hand of God were to relieve McWilliams of his afflictions, it’s probable he’d still wish to smoke marijuana for the same reason that some people like to smoke cigarettes and drink whiskey.

The American Civil Liberties Union has got into the McWilliams case and will defend him on the grounds that the behavior of the Justice Department smells more like suppressing McWilliams the advocate than McWilliams the marijuana producer.

State senator John Vasconcellos has issued a statewide plea in behalf of McWilliams, and some uncommitted observers are wondering about a federal practice that permitted marshals to seize McWilliams’ computer, keep him in jail for weeks, and draw up bail so huge ($250,000) as to require the posting of the houses of his mother and brother as security.
See
Los Angeles Times Prints Expanded Version Of State Senator Vasconcellos'
Defense Of Medical Marijuana: "Listen Up, Washington, the People Have Spoken"
and links

(One aspect of the bail regulation would have pleased George Orwell: He has to submit to a daily urine test to establish that he has not taken marijuana. If such a test were to prove positive, back he’d go to jail, and the family houses, presumably, to the auction block.)
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

In the heated polemical traffic on the McWilliams case one letter stands out, from ex-NORML director Richard Cowan.
See
Tahoe Paper Carries Front Page Article Laying Out The Battle Lines In The Kubby Case:
"We think this will be the ‘Scopes Monkey Trial’ of medical marijuana," said Steve Kubby.
"This entire clash of cultures and ideology will be on the table."
"For a moment, let’s ignore the whole medical marijuana question and remember that for six months the police from multiple jurisdictions watched the home of a political candidate in hopes of finding something incriminating, based on accusations in an unsigned letter."

The allusion is to Steve Kubby, a medical marijuana patient who was the Libertarian Party’s gubernatorial candidate in last year’s election, and his wife, Michele, arrested for growing pot at their Squaw Valley home.

"The really important subject here is not how many plants the Kubbys had sown or how helpful medical marijuana is, but rather how badly the police behaved."

The concluding lines of Cowan’s statement belong in the golden stanzas of the library of freedom:

"One of the problems that the marijuana reform movement consistently faces is that everyone wants to talk about what marijuana does, but no one ever wants to look at what marijuana prohibition does. Marijuana never kicks down your door in the middle of the night. Marijuana never locks up sick and dying people, does not suppress medical research, does not peek in bedroom windows. Even if one takes every reefer madness allegation of the prohibitionists at face value, marijuana prohibition has done far more harm to far more people than marijuana ever could."

(Marijuananews note: Who am I to argue with that?)