JUDGE DENIES ADVOCATE’S REQUEST TO SMOKE POT

LOS ANGELES, March 9 – Despite his pleas, medical marijuana advocate
and AIDS patient Peter McWilliams won’t be puffing pot while awaiting
trial on drug charges.

A federal judge in Los Angeles denied McWilliams request to smoke
Tuesday after he claimed that without the marijuana he cannot keep
down the nauseating anti-viral prescription drugs he must take to stay
alive.

McWilliams claims he has the right to grow and smoke marijuana under a
California law voters passed in 1996.

McWilliams essentially asked U.S. District Judge George H. King to
call a halt to the mandatory random drug testing the patient must
undergo as a condition of remaining free on bail.

Failing that, McWilliams wanted the judge to allow him to be enrolled
in a now-closed medical marijuana program that the government ran for
20 years through the University of Mississippi.

Although the Bush administration closed the program in 1992, the
government still grows pot for eight former participants in it.

“We are not empowered to grant (McWilliams) what amounts to a license
to violate federal law,” King wrote in his March 4 ruling. It was made
public today by the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

“Marijuana is classified as a Schedule I controlled substance. As
such, Congress determined that it `has no currently accepted medical
use in treatment in the United States.