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Best-selling author Peter McWilliams is victim of efforts to discredit medical marijuana, Libertarians say

WASHINGTON, DC—The arrest of medical marijuana activist Peter McWilliams proves that the federal government is "fanatically determined to wage its War on Drugs—even if it means putting sick and dying people in jail," the Libertarian Party charged today.

"Peter McWilliams is the latest victim of the federal government’s campaign to arrest and discredit advocates of medical marijuana," said Ron Crickenberger, the party’s national director. "For the government’s Drug Warriors, compassion is a crime, and propaganda is more important than the truth about the benefits of medical marijuana."

McWilliams, a #1 bestselling author and Libertarian Party member, was one of nine people charged in California on July 23 with conspiracy to grow marijuana plants, which McWilliams said he planned to distribute to sick people under the state’s medical marijuana law.

The indictment alleged that marijuana was grown at four locations in Los Angeles County, and that McWilliams had provided the funds for the operation. Prosecutors claim that McWilliams tried to sell some of the marijuana to the Los Angeles Cannabis Buyer’s Club, which has been distributing medical marijuana since 1996.

But McWilliams vehemently denied the accusations, and released a letter from prison saying, "I have never sold a drug in my life. . . . I am a vocal and occasionally effective proponent of medical marijuana—and that is why I am in jail."

McWilliams entered a formal plea of not guilty, but remains in federal custody as he tries to raise a $250,000 bond. If convicted, he faces a 10-year jail sentence.

At a July 31 hearing in federal court in Los Angeles, McWilliams’ attorneys accused the prison of withholding lifesaving medication from the author, who is suffering from AIDS and cancer, and asked that he be released for health reasons.

The judge denied the request, and also rejected a defense motion to reduce his bond.

McWilliams—whose book, Ain’t Nobody’s Business If You Do, criticizes "consensual crime" laws as immoral, destructive, and a waste of law enforcement resources—is a long-time, high-profile advocate of the benefits of medical marijuana.

Just 19 days before his arrest, McWilliams blasted the federal government’s vendetta against medical marijuana at the Libertarian National Convention.

In a speech broadcast nationwide on C-SPAN, he said, "Marijuana is the finest anti-nausea medication known to science, and our leaders have lied about this consistently. Medical marijuana is the most hideous example of government interference in the private lives of individuals. It’s an outrage within an outrage within an outrage."

Seven months before that, his home was raided by DEA agents, who seized his computer and a book-in-progress about medical marijuana, A Question of Compassion: An AIDS Cancer Patient Explores Medical Marijuana. His plight was subsequently detailed on the John Stossel television special, "Sex, Drugs, and Consenting Adults."

Previously, McWilliams had taken out an advertisement in Variety, the trade publication of the entertainment industry, attacking the federal government’s war on medical marijuana patients.

McWilliams’ passion on the medical marijuana issue comes, in part, from his own life: Suffering from both cancer and AIDS, he uses the drug to combat the nausea caused by his life-saving medical treatments.

"Tragically, McWilliams already suffers from two potentially fatal diseases. Now he suffers from a cruel government that arrested him for trying to save his own life, and the lives of other sick people," said Crickenberger. "Given McWilliams’ courageous opposition to the federal government’s efforts to attack, imprison, and discredit anyone who suggests that there are genuine medical benefits to marijuana, it’s not surprising that he’s been singled out for prosecution."

Medical marijuana is legal in California, thanks to Proposition 215, which voters passed in November 1996. The law decriminalized marijuana when used to treat medical conditions, but was immediately attacked by the Clinton Administration, which threatened to prosecute doctors who prescribe the drug, and to arrest medical marijuana users.

Despite Clinton’s actions, marijuana has a long history as a treatment for a variety of ailments, according to Dr. Lester Grinspoon, author of Marihuana, the Forbidden Medicine (Yale University Press, 1997). It has been used to cure the nausea and vomiting caused by chemotherapy, weight-loss syndrome from AIDS, chronic pain, depression, glaucoma, and muscle spasms.

The drug was the subject of more than 100 papers published in medical journals between 1840 and 1900, and was recommended as an appetite stimulant, analgesic, muscle relaxant, sedative, and as a treatment for migraine headaches.

In 1937, when marijuana was effectively outlawed, the American Medical Association opposed the ban.

As recently as 1988, the DEA’s administrative law judge, Francis L. Young, described marijuana as "one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man." Despite this, the DEA continued to list marijuana as a Schedule I drug, which means it has no accepted medical use and is unsafe even under medical supervision.

Efforts by doctors to clinically prove the medical benefits of marijuana have been stymied by the federal government. In 1994, for example, researchers at the University of California (San Francisco) tried to conduct a privately funded study comparing smoked marijuana to oral synthetic THC (the active ingredient in marijuana). However, the DEA prevented the researchers from legally obtaining the marijuana needed for the study.

Ironically, since the 1970s, the federal government has furnished medical marijuana—grown at a government pot farm in Mississippi—for victims of multiple sclerosis, glaucoma, and other ailments, at taxpayer expense.

Peter McWilliams, 48, is the owner of Prelude Press and a multi-million-copy-selling author who has written on subjects as wide-ranging as curing depression, emotional loss, victimless crimes, meditation, and computers.

Among his best-known titles are How to Survive the Loss of a Love (which sold over two million copies); The Personal Computer Book;

DO IT! Let’s Get Off Our Buts, a #1 New York Times bestseller; and Portraits (a book of photographs).

McWilliams is probably best known to Libertarians for Ain’t Nobody’s Business If You Do, a scathing attack on the foolishness of arresting people for "consensual crimes." First published in 1993, it was called "highly readable and entertaining" by Hugh Downs of ABC News.

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FOR FURTHER INFORMATION

To hear Peter McWilliams’ speech to the Libertarian National Convention, go to: http://aennet.com/libertarian/mcwilliams.htm

For updates on Peter McWilliams’ imprisonment, check:http://www.marijuanamagazine.com/jail/

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