MONTEL WILLIAMS URGES MEDICAL MARIJUANA

On a small stone bench along a corridor of the Rayburn House Office
Building last week, celebrated talk show host, motivational speaker and
decorated U.S. Marine Montel Williams was moved to tears as he tried to
describe the physical pain he deals with suffering from multiple sclerosis.
It's a pain, he says, that is kept in check only by a strict regimen of
smoking marijuana.

"I almost took my life two times because of the pain that I go through,"
Williams said, choking up at the memory. "If I can smoke a little pot to
stay alive, then I'll smoke a little pot and stay alive."

During a week when most Members of Congress were out of Washington,
Williams met with D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D) and spoke to a packed
room of some 175 Congressional staffers in an attempt to energize support
for an amendment to the Commerce, Justice, State and the judiciary
appropriations bill that would prevent the federal government from
undermining state laws that authorize the use of medicinal marijuana.

The amendment, proposed by Reps. Maurice Hinchey (D-N.Y.) and Dana
Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), fell 66 votes short of passage last year, with 152
supporters in the House.

This year's amendment could be voted on as early as today and Williams,
along with members of the Drug Policy Alliance and the Marijuana Policy
Project, remain cautiously optimistic about its chances of passing.

"If a Member of Congress votes to send cancer, MS and AIDS patients to
jail, we're going to make sure that voters in his or her district know that
by November," said Bill Piper, director of National Affairs for the Drug
Policy Alliance. "This is a life-and-death issue, and voters understand that."

Williams was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1999. But he first began
using marijuana regularly to treat pain even before he was officially
diagnosed.

After being prescribed "every form of pain medication there is," Williams'
doctors eventually agreed that marijuana was the best treatment for his
symptoms. But the well-known television personality only recently became an
outspoken advocate for medicinal marijuana after writing a book about his
life called "Climbing Higher."

"I am advocating for people like myself," he said. "There are so many of us
that live in silence, [and] there are a lot of other people that are
feeling the same pain that I'm feeling and can't get access" to medicinal
marijuana.

Williams, who carries a card in his wallet issued by the state of
California that allows him to obtain his marijuana supply, added, "We look
at illness in this country as a weakness. I may be ill, I'm not weak by any
stretch of the imagination, but what keeps me strong enough to walk every
day is my use of marijuana."

Citing concerns about the Drug Enforcement Administration and local law
enforcement, Williams would not say whether he uses marijuana when
traveling around the country to places such as Washington, which do not
currently permit the use of medicinal marijuana. He simply said, "I figure
out a way to deal with my pain."

And for this talk show celebrity, it's a way of life that can often be a
struggle.

In November, Williams was detained briefly at a Detroit airport after
screeners found that he was carrying a pipe with marijuana residue on it.
He was fined $100 and allowed to board his flight to New York, but he could
have faced up to a year in prison under Michigan law which does not provide
a medical exemption for marijuana.

"I'm asking for us to do what we've done for the last 300 years in this
country, and that is believe in those people who we think are educated
enough to make medical decisions -- we call them doctors," he said. "Why
can't I listen to a doctor to cure my pain?"

The problem, Williams added, is that "we have politicians in this country
who think they are smarter than doctors on this one issue, they're not
smarter on anything else, but on this one issue they have to be smarter."

Williams was talking about those same politicians later that afternoon when
he warned a room of young Congressional staffers that he "will be your
boss's biggest nightmare -- I will not stop" in advocating for medicinal
marijuana use, even if this year's amendment does not pass.

One of those Members who might be hearing more from Williams is Rep. Mark
Souder (R-Ind.), who spoke out against the Rohrabacher-Hinchey amendment
last year and is looking to defeat it again this year.

"The Hinchey Amendment would allow individual states to gut the federal
health and safety regulations of drugs and potentially other medical
products and services, without any solid scientific justification," Souder
said in an e-mail. "I support, and so does [the Food and Drug
Administration], responsible scientific research on the possible medical
uses of some components of marijuana. ... But we should make those
decisions on the basis of scientific evidence, and not on state referenda."

Whatever they think of him, Members are going to have to get used to seeing
a lot more of Williams on prime time. Last month, the Showtime network
signed Williams as the host of the new reality series "American Candidate."
The show, which will debut Aug. 1, attempts to identify one individual who
has the qualifications and qualities to be president of the United States.
Among those competing for the job is Chrissy Gephardt, daughter of former
Democratic presidential hopeful Rep. Richard Gephardt (Mo.).

Williams just recently finished filming the first eight episodes of the
10-episode series and said that the show is likely to influence not only
the debate surrounding this year's election but also the turnout on
Election Day.

"This show is coming at a time when we really need to find a way to
re-spark American interest in our own political process. This is an
opportunity in an entertaining way to educate the American public about the
behind the scenes of the presidential campaign," he said. "We have regular
Americans talking about the issues that face this country every day and
addressing them and arguing them in a way that our current two candidates
aren't."

The show, he said, is a way to turn the presidential election back over to
the people.

"One thing that a lot of people in this country seem to do every election
is pay too close attention to those pundits who are feeding you their
opinion on who is going to win and lose, and they don't go out and vote
because they feel their vote isn't going to count.

"Hopefully every morning after this is aired on Sunday nights this will be
the water-cooler conversations."

And while Williams said he's sad to see that neither of the two leading
candidates has come forward to definitively state his stance either for or
against medicinal marijuana, he promises that every one of his American
Candidates has taken an opinion on it, and on many of the other issues
President Bush and Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) aren't talking about.

"It's going to shock you," he promised.