CONDEMNING DISSIDENT AUTHORS TO DEATH

A well-meaning soul recently asked me, "Vin, why do you have to focus
on the loss a few minor rights? This is still the freest nation on
earth. Look at your own writings. In what other country would you be
allowed to write these things with no fear of repercussions?"

I imagine Peter McWilliams may have briefly shared that thought in 1993
when Prelude Press brought out his 800-page opus, "Ain't Nobody's Business
If You Do: The Absurdity of Consensual Crimes in a Free Society." Ditto
Steve Kubby when Loompanics of Port Townsend, Washington published his "The
Politics of Consciousness" in 1995.

Both authors are survivors (so far) of often-fatal diseases, who
attribute their survival to the therapeutic use of marijuana.

The Associated Press reported on March 20: "Steve Kubby ... has a Feb.
4 letter from Dr. Vincent DeQuattro, a professor of medicine at the
University of Southern California, stating that Kubby still has a
malignancy, for which the marijuana 'in some amazing fashion ... has
not only controlled the symptoms ... but in my view has arrested the
growth.' "

Mr. Kubby attracted further official attention to his anti-Drug-War
beliefs when he ran for governor of California on the Libertarian
Party ticket last year. Both writers were proved prescient when
California voters decided in 1996 to legalize the many medical uses of
marijuana by a whopping 70-to-30 margin. And that should have been the
end of that.

Except that the kind of morally atrophied weasels who run our current
War on Drugs have made a big mistake since the recent legalization
votes in California, Nevada and Arizona. They have allowed two of the
most cynical lies of modern politics -- that the government only
enforces the will of the majority, and that if you want the law
changed all you have to do is convince a majority to side with you at
the polls -- to be revealed as just that: two of the biggest steaming
piles of diarrheal mendacity that ever brought tears to the eyes and
bile to the throats of a free people.

McWilliams was busted and imprisoned last July. Late last year, drug
agents stormed the Olympic Valley house of Mr. Kubby and his wife
Michele, after weeks of surveilling the married couple through their
bedroom window -- dragging them away in chains for growing a few
hundred marijuana plants for medical use, two years after the people
of California legalized medical marijuana.

Both men had doctors' recommendations. The Fearless Drug Warriors'
excuse? They were growing "too many" plants.

(I once worked briefly for the publisher of a weekly newspaper who was
convinced the photography staff was embezzling film -- he counted no
more than 36 photos in each weekly issue, yet the photographer used
several 36-shot rolls of film each week. In vain we tried to explain
to him that a photographer can burn through several rolls trying to
get just one usable sports photo. Similarly, the California narco
toadies seem to believe that in horticulture, to produce 30 or 40
mature plants it is only necessary to germinate 30 or 40 seeds.)

Anyway, I'm sure the arrests and subsequent medical torture (by
depriving them of the only medicine doctors say can keep them alive)
of these two authors won't have too great a "chilling effect" on the
future willingness of others to challenge the government's wisdom, do
you think?

Author McWilliams wrote to California state Attorney General William
Lockyer on March 18: "Since my dual diagnosis (of AIDS and cancer) in
March 1996, I have used medical marijuana under the guidance and
supervision of three California physicians to fight the nausea caused
by the prescription anti-AIDS and anti-cancer medications I must take.

"If I cannot keep down my life-saving medications, I will die. Medical
marijuana, in my case, had been 99.9 percent effective in alleviating
nausea for more than two years. ... Because I cannot keep down my
prescription medications without medical marijuana forbidden me by my bail
release my viral load has risen dramatically, from undetectable (under 40)
to more than 250,000. AIDS doctors become concerned when the viral load
tops 10,000. ... (Please see the letter from my AIDS physician, Daniel
Bowers, M.D. at http://www.petertrial.com/doc1.jpg .)"

Last week, the court ruled that if McWilliams dies before his trial
due to the fact he is forbidden marijuana in the meantime, that's just
too bad.

Steve Kubby and his wife have been bankrupted -- the magazine business
they ran out of their home destroyed when arresting drug goons refused
to return their computer. Mr. Kubby wrote on March 22:

"Our raid, our bankruptcy and the refusal of the prosecutors or
judges to return any of our most basic tools and possessions shows how
Drug War laws are increasingly used against ordinary citizens. Law
authorizing such unconstitutional searches and seizures were intended
originally to be used only against 'drug kingpins.' Today these
draconian laws are used as standard procedure to destroy the lives of
anyone caught with marijuana, even sick and dying people, all to
uphold a corrupt and failed federal drug policy."

Vin Suprynowicz is the assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas
Review-Journal. His new book, "Send in the Waco Killers: Essays on the
Freedom Movement, 1993-1998," is available at $21.95 plus $3 shipping ($6
UPS; $2 shipping each additional copy) through Mountain Media, P.O. Box
4422, Las Vegas, Nev. 89127-4422. The 500-page trade paperback may also be
ordered via web site http://www.thespiritof76.com/wacokillers.html or at
1-800-244-2224.