SAN DIEGAN WHO WAS LEADER OF CAUSE COMMITTED SUICIDE

In the same public square where he poked government in the eye so
many times, where he smoked marijuana in the open and even handed out
samples, Steve McWilliams will be heard from one last time Tuesday.

Friends and supporters of McWilliams, who killed himself last week in
a desperate effort to end his suffering and draw attention to his
cause, will gather at City Hall at noon to remember the activist who
pushed San Diego into becoming the largest city in the nation to
adopt a medical marijuana law.

McWilliams' suicide Monday, the day he turned 51, has reverberated
far beyond San Diego County.

Activists in at least 15 other cities are planning events to coincide
with the San Diego memorial. They expect the gatherings will be part
remembrance and part protest over the way they say McWilliams had
been targeted by the federal government.

In Washington D.C., supporters are planning a candlelight vigil
encircling the Capitol. Medical marijuana advocates said they want to
get a proposed law, aimed at permitting a medical-necessity defense
in federal cases, named after McWilliams.

"He was a pioneer in the movement," said Claudia Little, a retired
nurse from Point Loma who is helping to organize the San Diego
service. "He was the one who brought the issue of the implementation
of Proposition 215 to the forefront."

McWilliams almost single-handedly forced the San Diego City Council
to address Proposition 215, the 1996 initiative that for the first
time gave ailing Californians the legal right to use marijuana to
ease symptoms.

Week after week for years on end he showed up at meetings, often
carrying a small marijuana plant, to urge the council to take action
to implement the state law.

His activism took many forms; he alternately ran for City Council and
sued the city for allegedly violating his civil rights.

Ultimately, his efforts paid off. The council formed a task force to
draw up medical marijuana guidelines, and in 2003 it passed an
ordinance outlining how many plants patients would be allowed to grow
in San Diego.

McWilliams served on the committee for a time but quit when he felt
the process had become bogged down in bureaucracy.

"There were clearly others, but Steve McWilliams was the driving
force" behind those guidelines, said Councilwoman Toni Atkins, who
plans to request that the City Council adjourn tomorrow's session in
his memory. "He was willing to take on that role when many people
would not, or couldn't."

Barbara MacKenzie, McWilliams' longtime partner and co-founder of the
Shelter from the Storm medical marijuana resource center, said
Tuesday's memorial service at City Hall will be a fitting tribute.

The service will include eulogies from McWilliams' friends and fellow
medical marijuana advocates, but MacKenzie said anyone who shows up
will get a turn on the podium.

"That was his true belief, getting people to realize they have the
power to change and improve their lives, if they just join together
and speak," she said.

McWilliams drew the attention of federal agents in 2002 after he
smoked pot and gave away small bags of the drug on the steps of City
Hall to protest a raid on a medical marijuana cooperative in Santa Cruz County.

In 2003 he was convicted of illegal cultivation and received a
six-month federal prison term. The sentence was stayed pending
appeal, but he was not allowed to use marijuana while the case was unresolved.

When he died, McWilliams was in serious and persistent pain from an
earlier motorcycle accident, a condition he said was made worse by
his abstinence from marijuana. In a note he left at his side, he said
the discomfort was too much for him to bear and he hoped his suicide
would help change the government's position on the medicinal value of
marijuana, MacKenzie said.

Last month's Supreme Court ruling confirming the government's
authority to prosecute medical marijuana patients struck a severe
blow to McWilliams' hope of winning his appeal, MacKenzie said. He
was afraid of going to jail but also feared waiting in limbo for
months or years.

He had often said the prescription painkillers he used as a
substitute for marijuana were far more expensive and left him
nauseous and weakened.

Thousands of patients across California sympathized with McWilliams'
plight, MacKenzie said, but they are afraid to confront the federal
government because they could be prosecuted.

She hopes that will start to change Tuesday. "We want to take the
fear away as part of the healing," she said. "We know it's there."

Leaders of the activist group Americans for Safe Access have been
pushing supporters around the country to express their outrage at
what they say is the government's role in McWilliams' decision to end his life.

"Steve McWilliams was tortured by the federal government because of
the medication he needed," said Steph Sherer, executive director of
Berkeley-based Americans for Safe Access. "There have been hundreds
of messages mourning Steve and wishing Barbara well -- and really
pointing fingers at the federal government."

In addition to Washington, D.C., where activists plan a candlelight
vigil and walk around the Capitol, mourners are planning memorial
services in Texas, Pennsylvania, Utah, Oregon, Indiana and Colorado,
McWilliams' home state.

"Patients are having to suffer, even though laws have been passed,"
said Jim Greig, a medical marijuana patient from Eugene, Ore., who is
organizing the event there. "We still don't have access to our medicine.