GOVERNMENT PROTECTING US TO DEATH

McWilliams never got a satisfactory answer to his question. Instead,
he was made a martyr to it. Fifty-year-old McWilliams died on June 14
at his home in Los Angeles. Press reports say he died by choking while
vomiting in the bathroom.

I hold the government largely responsible. No doubt, so would
he.

During the last days of his life McWilliams was waiting to be
sentenced by a federal judge for conspiracy to distribute marijuana
plants that federal prosecutors said were going to supply California's
medical marijuana cooperatives. He was waiting to see whether he would
be one of those jailed for helping people commit a consensual crime,
the kind he wrote about with such acerbic wit in his book.

The fact that he was arrested well after Californians passed
Proposition 215, legalizing medical marijuana, didn't seem to matter
to federal prosecutors. They came after him anyway and charged him
with a crime that carried a possible sentence of 10 years in prison.
For McWilliams that kind of time was a death sentence. He had AIDS and
non- Hodgkin's lymphoma, though it was in remission, and had been
using marijuana as medicine himself. It helped him keep his pills down
and control the nausea that came with his medical treatment.

It appears the federal government targeted McWilliams because of his
political activism. Juan Ros, executive director of the Libertarian
Party of California, has seen it before. "The government seeks these
outspoken medical marijuana users and goes after them," he said.

The federal government has been so blinded by its slavish devotion to
an unwinnable drug war that it refuses to act proportionately toward
marijuana. Substantial anecdotal evidence suggests that marijuana use
eases the suffering of people with AIDS, multiple sclerosis, cancer
and glaucoma. But the government has done everything in its power to
deny science the tools to confirm this. Despite a much ballyhooed
"liberalization" of research guidelines, it is still tougher to get
approval for a clinical trial on the medical benefits of marijuana
than on any synthesized pharmaceutical.

Through popular referendums and legislation, eight states and the
District of Columbia have now legalized the use of medical marijuana,
but the federal government isn't admitting defeat quietly. Congress
has barred the District from implementing its referendum on medical
marijuana, the Office of National Drug Control Policy has threatened
to yank the prescription-writing privileges of physicians who
recommend the medical marijuana to patients, and in an effort to shut
them down, federal prosecutors have sued a number of California's
cannabis buyers' clubs.

McWilliams' prosecution was part of this pattern of
harassment.

In defending himself against the charges, McWilliams had wanted to use
the "medical necessity" defense, but U.S. District Judge George King
in California refused to allow it. That meant McWilliams was barred
from mentioning to a jury that his fellow Californians had legalized
medical marijuana or anything about his infirmities and the relief he
got by using marijuana himself.

So McWilliams gave up and pleaded guilty.

His bail was set at a whopping $250,000, an astounding amount for a
man who was such a small flight risk. To make bail, his mother had to
put up her home as security. While awaiting sentencing, the judge
explicitly barred McWilliams from using medical marijuana and forced
him to undergo weekly drug tests. McWilliams complied so that his
mother wouldn't lose her home, which meant he was unable to control
his nausea.

He died while vomiting.

How can this be an American story? How has our government gotten its
priorities so out of whack that it's actively punishing people who are
only trying to heal themselves and others?

In his book, McWilliams wrote: "It is not the law's job to protect
adults from the risks of their own consensual activities." Too bad our
government isn't willing to let us all live by this simple
prescription for personal liberty. Instead, the government insisted on
protecting McWilliams from his own choices, right into the grave. ---