FREETHINKER NOW SILENCED BY THE FEDS' DRUG VENDETTA

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die.

These words from Ecclesiastes begin best-selling author Peter McWilliams'
book How To Survive the Loss of a Love.

McWilliams' time to die came last month. The government did not kill him
directly, although McWilliams would still be alive if not for the hounding
of federal prosecutors and the decisions of a federal judge.

McWilliams, 50, admittedly smoked dope and encouraged others to do the same.

Marijuana was the only substance that relieved McWilliams' nausea, which
was caused by the drugs that fought his AIDS and cancer. He founded Medical
Marijuana Magazine online to help others.

But, despite California laws legalizing medical marijuana, DEA agents
stormed McWilliams' Los Angeles home and the offices of his publishing
company and charged him with growing, possessing and conspiring to sell the
evil weed.

McWilliams pleaded guilty to a lesser charge after federal Judge George
King denied him a defense. The judge would not allow McWilliams to
introduce into evidence information about his illness or California's law.

And, of course, King ordered weekly urine tests for McWilliams, whose
nausea, without the marijuana, became uncontrollable.

McWilliams was out on bail and awaiting sentencing when he died, choking on
his own vomit, in his bathtub.

I knew McWilliams only casually. We traded a few e-mails after he read one
of my columns on the Dispatch Web site last year. He retained his humor and
optimism, although the feds had started the campaign that ended in his
destruction.

Conservative commentator William F. Buckley knew McWilliams much better than I.

In a recent column, Buckley called his friend "a wry, mythogenic guy,
humorous, affectionate, articulate, shrewd, sassy."

"Imagine such a spirit ending its life at 50, just because they wouldn't
let him have a toke," Buckley wrote.

McWilliams' political philosophy was summed up in the title of his 1993
book Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do: The Absurdity of Consensual Crimes
in a Free Society.

"This book is based on a single idea," McWilliams wrote. "You should be
allowed to do whatever you want with your own person and property, as long
as you don't physically harm the person or property of a nonconsenting other."

In the book, McWilliams notes that the government has jailed more than
750,000 people for acts "that did not physically harm the person or
property of another."

"Throwing people in jail is the extreme," McWilliams wrote, but the DEA
proved him wrong.

The war on drugs now transcends questions of liberal vs. conservative. It
now pits government against citizen, power against liberty, politics
against common sense.

McWilliams was targeted not because he used marijuana but because he spoke out.

"If the DEA has seized my computer to silence me, it has failed,"
McWilliams wrote recently in Liberty magazine.

But that failure was only temporary. McWilliams -- a voice favoring life,
liberty and the pursuit of happiness, a voice opposing conformity -- is now
silenced forever.

But they can't silence everyone.

As Ecclesiastes says, there is a time to keep silence and a time to speak.

The time to speak is now.