A SURVIVOR'S TALE

The Federal Drug Police Can't Keep A Good Man Down

I love to paraphrase Oscar Wilde. His original line -- the third-to-the-last
of the witty lines credited to him -- was, "The way England treats her
prisoners, she doesn't deserve to have any." (The last two were made as he
lay dying at only 45 shortly after his release from prison, a butterfly
broken on the wheel. When presented with his final hotel bill he replied, "I
am dying beyond my means." At the end, he looked around him and observed,
"Either this wallpaper goes or I do.") A century ago, Wilde was incarcerated
in a British prison for sodomy.

I may soon be incarcerated in an American federal prison as the result of
sodomy. Apparently, time, oceans, and Revolutionary Wars don't seem to
change the nature of oppressive government intrusion into the private lives
of homosexual eccentrics. I have AIDS.

As I was unable to convince my parents that I was Haitian, and as I have a
well-documented aversion to needles, I had to admit I got my HIV in the
Oscar Wilde way. Although I had not used illicit drugs in more than two
decades, in 1996 I began using medical marijuana to relieve the nausea
caused by my cancer and AIDS medications. In July 1998, I was arrested on
federal medical marijuana charges, even though I live in California, a state
in which the use and cultivation of medical marijuana by the sick is legal.
The "official" reason I was arrested was that I gave a book advance (I blush
to confess I have been a publisher for 32 years, the progeny of my press
having appeared five times on the New York Times Bestseller List) to an
author for, How to Grow Medical Marijuana (available at Amazon.com). A
fellow medical marijuana patient, he used a portion of his advance to grow
medical marijuana. The government arrested him in June 1997.

Because I was the source of the funds he used to finance his grow, I was
arrested as a drug kingpin -- the head of the notorious Medicine Cartel, I
suppose. By this federal logic, if a New York Times reporter used a portion
of his or her meager salary to engage the services of a prostitute, the
owners of the New York Times could be arrested on federal pandering charges.

I also grew some marijuana for my own medical use, in the time-honored
tradition of Washington, Jefferson, and Timothy Leary. The actual reason I
was arrested, however, was that I had written "Ain't Nobody's Business if
You Do: The Absurdity of Consensual Crimes in Our Free Country." During
questioning after the pot-growing author's arrest in 1997, four DEA Special
Agents told me that they had found my book on the shelf of every drug dealer
they had ever busted. I, naturally, was flattered. To the DEA, however, I
represented the lowest of the low. To them, my libertarian view of the War
on Drugs provided the intellectual underpinnings and philosophical
justification for the most nefarious criminals in our country -- those who
are poisoning our precious children with pernicious drugs.

Thirteen months of harassment later -- including five subpoenas for
voluminous documents; dragging all my employees, an unknown number of past
employees, my contractor, my electrician, and my neighbor before a federal
grand jury; and a dawn raid on my home by eight DEA agents and one IRS agent
(documented in my article "The DEA Wishes Me a Nice Day" in Liberty, May
1998 ) -- I was arrested.

Bail was set at an astounding $250,000. My attorney had sent a letter to the
federal prosecutors months before saying that I knew I was going to be
arrested, that I was not about to flee the country, and that I would
willingly appear for arraignment at the time and place specified by the
government. Nevertheless, I was deemed a "flight risk." I spent a month in
federal custody while my mother and brother had their houses appraised and
navigated their way through the endless labyrinth of federal obstacles
required to use real estate as collateral for my bond.

Live Free and (Nearly) Die

Once released, I was not permitted to use the medical marijuana I needed to
keep down my nausea-producing AIDS medications. For more than two years
prior to my arrest, thanks to medical marijuana, I had a perfect retention
rate. My viral load -- the measure of active AIDS virus in the body -- was
undetectable. Unable to keep down the lifesaving prescription medications,
by November 1998, four months after the arrest, my viral load soared to more
than 256,000. In 1996, when my viral load was only 12,500, I had already
developed an AIDS-related cancer, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (now in remission,
thank you).

Even so, the government would not yield. It continued to urine test me. If
marijuana were found in my system, my mother and brother would lose their
homes and I would be returned to prison. As both the President and the
Vice-President of the United States had admitted to marijuana use
themselves, I was -- as were the other 4 million Americans arrested for
marijuana during the Clinton-Gore watch --caught between a rock, a hard
place, and deplorable hypocrisy.

For the next year, with essentially no immune system, I fully expected daily
to develop one of the thirty-or-so AIDS-related opportunistic illnesses and
die. If I lived, I faced a ten-year mandatory minimum sentence, with no
possibility of parole. (Already over capacity, the government would merely
release a murderer earlier to make space for me.) I slept eighteen hours a
day. I was unable to work. My personal fortune, not that fortunate to begin
with, had evaporated. I filed for bankruptcy -- which one must do,
ironically, in federal court. My publishing company -- once a $6
million-a-year enterprise employing eighteen people --fell apart. (This was
partly due to my inattention and inability to write new books, and party due
to the DEA telling my employees during its search of my offices in December
1997, "You'd all better look for other work. The DEA will own this place in
six months." Three months later, all my employees had followed the DEA's
advice.) My waking hours were consumed with nausea and vomiting. Every
productive hour was spent working on my defense. Of thirteen motions
submitted to court, twelve-and-one-half were denied; every motion submitted
by the federal prosecutors was granted. My boyfriend of eleven years
deserted me.

By the way, did I mention that during this year I was depressed?

Don't Confuse Them With the Facts

But in November 1999 came the most crushing blow. The federal prosecutors
successfully obtained an order prohibiting me from presenting to the jury
that I am a cancer survivor, that I have AIDS, that marijuana is medicine
according to the federally funded March 1999 Institute of Medicine report,
that since 1974 the federal government has been supplying eight patients
with medical marijuana, or that California passed a law permitting the very
act of cultivation that I was accused of violating federally.

How could the government do this? Well, federal law, you see, is far tougher
on criminals than state law. The rate of federal convictions is
astonishingly high -- 85 to 90 percent. Federal criminal law was originally
designed to dispense with the wily and slippery destroyers of the nation,
such as traitors and spies. In the late 1940s and 1950s, the federal
tough-on-criminals code was expanded to break up organized crime --
organized, as it turns out, as a direct response to federal Prohibition.
Thanks to the War on Drugs, this
guilty-until-proven-innocent-beyond-all-possible-doubt mind-set is now being
applied to cancer-surviving AIDS patients treating their illnesses while
trying to help other gravely ill people treat theirs.

The specific peg on which the government barred all evidence of medical
marijuana in my case is a nifty federal rule saying that no evidence can be
presented that might "confuse" the jury. Due to the nefarious criminals and
horrific crimes federal law at one time addressed -- back when "to make a
federal case out of it" actually meant something --this rule has essentially
been interpreted by the courts as applying to any evidence that might
"confuse" the jury as to the guilt of the defendant.

In my case, because marijuana is a Schedule I drug under the federal
Controlled Substances Act, and since Schedule I drugs are, by definition, of
no medicinal value, marijuana can have no medicinal value because it is,
after all, a Schedule I drug. To tell a jury otherwise would tend to
"confuse" them.

As to the federal government distributing marijuana to the sick each month,
that "Compassionate Use" program (as it was called) was discontinued by the
federal government in 1992 because too many pesky AIDS patients were
imploring the government for medical marijuana. The federal health officials
did not want to send "the wrong message" to children, so it closed down the
program. The program is now being "phased out" by "attrition," meaning that
the government is waiting for the last eight people in the program to die
(everyone else from the original program is already dead). Information about
a defunct federal program would tend to "confuse" the jury.

As to California's medical marijuana law, well, every federale knows that
federal law trumps state law (something about the "supreme law of the land"
in that otherwise-completely-ignored-by-the-federal-government document, the
Constitution), so there's no need to "confuse" the jurors about the
long-ago-settled supremacy issue, either.

As I never denied my medical marijuana cultivation, that left me with no
defense whatsoever. To avoid an almost-certain guilty verdict and a ten-year
mandatory-minimum sentence, I pled guilty to a lesser charge (The whole, sad
story is at www.petertrial.com).

I am overjoyed to end this article on a jubilant note. My most recent viral
load came back undetectable. This brings to mind the telegram Mark Twain
sent to a New York newspaper that had printed his obituary: "The reports of
my death are greatly exaggerated."

Over time, I tried various techniques to keep the AIDS medications down a
little longer before vomiting. In addition to large doses of Marinol, which
is essential, I added herbs, lying in hot water, curled up in a fetal
position in bed, and two electric massagers -- a smaller one to stimulate
the acupuncture points for anti-nausea, and a larger one for my stomach.

Gradually, over many months of trial and mostly error, I was able to
increase the length of time I could hold down my medications from 30 minutes
to one hour and fifteen minutes. That 45-minute increase is apparently
enough for the medications to get into my system.

Since November 1998, I had been living week by week, fully expecting any day
to redevelop non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (my viral load now 20 times higher than
the first time I developed it) or some other AIDS-related opportunistic
illness, and die. Now, I can look ahead to a series of books and web sites
that will not be completed until the end of 2003.

My personal physician, as well as the foremost AIDS physician in Southern
California who recently examined me, are both writing strong letters to the
judge saying that I have medically proven that I can take care of my illness
at home using methods not available in federal prison. This is an excellent
argument for serving whatever time I may be sentenced to under home
detention.

The procedure of keeping down the medications is agonizing, exhausting,
debilitating, and I must do it three times a day. It would be entirely
unnecessary if I could use medical marijuana. But it seems to be working. I
have gotten my life back the old fashioned way -- I earned it.

[Sidebar:]

May It Please the Court...

I do hope you are asking yourself, "Can I do anything to help?" Yes, thank
you, there is. Would you please take the time to send a letter, or a fax, or
even an e-mail, to the judge on my behalf? It would make all the difference
in my world. My sentencing for this charge will be in late May 2000. The
deadline for turning in letters of support is May 10, 2000.

The letter need not be long or eloquent. One sentence is sufficient.

The judge can sentence me to anything from 0 to 5 years. The federal
sentencing guidelines place my recommended (but not mandatory) sentence in
the 5-year range. It is probably unavoidable that I get a sentence to serve
some time -- perhaps the full five years.

What I am asking the judge -- and what I am asking you to ask the judge --
is that I be able to serve my sentence under "home detention," also known as
"electronic monitoring." An electronic transmitter would be permanently
fastened to my ankle and my whereabouts would be monitored 24 hours a day.
(Hillary now has a similar device on Bill as well as all White House
interns. She can monitor everyone's location from her campaign bus.) I would
not be able to leave my home except for medical or court appointments. As I
live in Los Angeles, this will allow me to write books, including "Galileo
L.A."

In writing to Judge King, please observe these commonsense guidelines:

1. Please be respectful. The judge owes me, or you, nothing. You are asking
for a favor. When Judge King was asked to allow me to use medical marijuana
while out on bail, he said to the attorneys on both sides, in a voice
trembling with compassion, "I am struggling mightily with this. Please,
struggle with me." Alas, there was nothing in federal law that permitted him
to allow me to break federal law, even to save my life. But I believe his
struggle was sincere. Judge King is a good judge upholding a bad law. My
sentence is at his discretion. I believe he will be fair, that he will read
the letter you send, and that he will be moved by your heartfelt request.

2. Please focus on my health, my contributions to society (through my
books), and, of course, most significantly, my contribution to Liberty
magazine, as reasons why I should receive home detention or electronic
monitoring (the term can be used interchangeably). The legal arguments will
be made by my attorney.

3. If you know me, please say so. Kindly state any positive character traits
you may have noticed wafting by from time to time. (Although this letter is
going to a federal judge, it is not written under oath, so you will not be
arrested for perjury.)

4. If you have read any of my books, please say so. If they helped you,
please say how. (Exception: Please do not mention "Ain't Nobody's Business
if You Do.")

5. Please do not give your opinion of the War on Drugs (unless you're in
favor of it), how the government treated me in this case (unless you
approve), your views on medical marijuana (unless you're against it), or
anything else critical of the status quo. Save those remarks, however
well-reasoned and accurate, for letters-to-the-editor and conversations with
your friends. They may be counterproductive in a letter to a federal judge.

6. If you can, please keep the letter to one page, and no longer than two.

Actual letters (those things popularized during the last millennium, printed
on paper, put into envelopes, and sent through the Post Office) are best.
Typed is better, but handwritten is fine. Please use the most impressive
letterhead to which you have legitimate access. (Your business stationery is
better than your personal stationery, for example, unless your company is
Bongs 'R Us.) If you don't have stationery, you can create a letterhead on
any word processor in about two minutes.

Please address the letters to: "The Honorable George H. King" and begin the
letter: "Dear Judge King." But mail the letters to me at: Peter McWilliams,
8165 Mannix Drive, Los Angeles, California, 90046.

If you know you're probably not going to get around to writing a letter, and
I know just how you feel -- I don't know where to find an envelope any more,
much less a stamp -- please send a fax (signed, on letterhead stationery, if
possible, but if not, that's fine) to: 323-650-1541.

If you think you might not get around to sending a fax, please send an
e-mail. Please write at the bottom of the e-mail "You have my permission to
reformat this letter, edit it, print it, and sign my name at the bottom."

Your name will be signed for you, next to which will be the initials of the
person signing it. Please include your complete mailing address. The e-mail
address is peter@mcwilliams.com

Finally, please circulate this request as widely as you can -- post it on
bulletin boards, send it to receptive people on your e-mail list, send it
out in newsletters. Kindly use your creativity, but, please, no spamming.

If you cannot post the entire missive, the online address of this request is
www.petertrial.com/letters.htm.

Thank you from the bottom of my weary but very grateful heart.