AUTHOR AN ADVOCATE OF MARIJUANA FOR SICK

Contracted AIDS: Arrest For Growing Drug Became Test Case

Peter McWilliams, who has died aged 50 of AIDS-related symptoms and
lymphoma, was a best-selling author of self-help books, but he was known in
recent years as an advocate for the legalization of marijuana for medicinal
purposes. At his death, he was awaiting sentence in federal court after
being convicted of having conspired to possess, manufacture and sell marijuana.

Mr. McWilliams made his case for the legalization of drugs in a 1993 book,
Ain't Nobody's Business if You Do: The Absurdity of Consensual Crimes in a
Free Society, which was adopted as a libertarian manifesto.

Three years later he was diagnosed with lymphoma and turned to marijuana to
ease the side effects of chemotherapy.

In 1997, he and his co-defendant, Todd McCormick, were arrested and charged
with growing more than 4,000 marijuana plants. The arrest became a test of
judicial tolerance in California.

Accused of financing the enterprise, Mr. McWilliams insisted he was growing
the marijuana for co-operatives supplying the drug to medical patients in
California. In his defence he cited Proposition 215, a medical marijuana
initiative approved by California voters in 1996. Government prosecutors
contended that he was growing the plants for profit.

The two men pleaded guilty to the charges last year after the judge ruled
that they could not use Proposition 215 as a defence (federal courts have
declined to recognize the initiative); nor could they tell the jury about
Proposition 215 or of their own medical conditions (Mr. McCormick has fused
vertabrae from childhood cancer treatment).

Mr. McWilliams was released on $250,000 bail on the condition that he not
use marijuana. Being denied the drug, he said, left him feeling nauseous
and weak. At his last court appearance, he sat slumped in his wheelchair,
and he finally choked to death on his vomit.

Peter Alexander McWilliams was born in Detroit on Aug. 5, 1949. His father
was a drugstore supervisor and his mother worked occasionally in sales. He
graduated from Allen Park High School and attended Eastern Michigan
University, in Ypsilanti, and later studied under Maharishi Mahesh Yogi at
Maharishi International University in Fairfield, Iowa.

At 17, he wrote his first book, Come Love with Me and Be My Life, a
collection of romantic poems published by his own Versemonger Press.

In 1982, he caught the crest of the wave of the personal-computer
revolution with his highly successful The Word Processing Book: A Short
Course in Computer Literacy.

Among the better known of the nearly 40 books that followed were Surviving
the Loss of a Love (1971); Life 101: Everything We Wish We Had Learned
about Life in School but Didn't (1990), one of several works he wrote with
John-Roger, the pen name of Roger Delano Hinkins, head of the Church of the
Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness; and Life 202: What to Do When Your
Guru Sues You (1994), written after the author had a falling out with
John-Roger.