WAR ON PEOPLE

Medical cannabis patient, Freedom Fighter, and author of the book
Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do Peter McWilliams died in his home on
Wednesday, June 14. He was 50 years of age. He apparently died
from suffocation on his own vomit.

He had typically controlled severe nausea, from AIDs and cancer
medications, through the use of cannabis.

However, under conditions of his bail, he had to pass regular drug
screenings or his mother would lose her house, which she put up for
his bail of $250,000. The denial of cannabis as a medicine by the
courts led him to develop a rigorous daily routine, which consisted of
many hours of lying in bed, that enabled him to keep down the numerous
pills he had to take, pills that cause violent nausea in 40 percent of
the population.

McWilliams was facing a possible 5 year Federal prison sentence, some
would say death, sentence for conspiracy to grow cannabis.

He was working with marijuana activist Todd McCormick with research on
a book about growing medical cannabis and which varieties help for
which ailments.

The statewide operation, which included around 4,000 plants, was
busted by Federal authorities in 1998. He broke the law, but simple it
isn't; McWilliams and McCormick live in California, one of seven
states that have passed laws protecting the sick and dying who choose
to use medical cannabis.

In 1996, the people of California voted in a majority to allow for the
medical use of cannabis.

The federal government violated the 10th amendment of the U.S.
Constitution when they went against the will of the people of California.

This man's death sends a clear message to the American people that the
federal government would rather let a human being choke to death on
his own vomit or go to federal prison than use cannabis to help
improve their quality of life. A plant that has no humanly attainable
lethal dose, a plant that the Drug Enforcement Administration's own
Judge Francis Young concluded "is one of the safest therapeutically
active substances known to man." That is a far higher crime than using
a plant which the Creator put here for our use.

Achibald Macleish once said, "Freedom is the right to choose: the
right to create for oneself the alternatives of choice.

Without the possibility of choice a man is not a man but a member, an
instrument, a thing."

If we are to be free we must stand up against this tyranny and
treason, we must face the overwhelming odds against us and oppose
them. If we do not we will never be free.

Brian Parrett
Elementary education junior