His Enemy Was Intransigence: how Peter McWilliams died

[RainDog]

Peter McWilliams was a libertarian. Don't hold that against him. He wrote a book, Ain't Nobody's Business If I Do, in 1993 which discussed the uselessness of laws to deal with victimless crimes, such as prohibition of cannabis.

In 1996, Peter developed AIDS and lymphoma. Medical marijuana saved his life. Here is what he had to say about the situation in 2000, in an address to a libertarian convention (you can find a link to the full speech via the link below. Clinton was president when McWilliams was going through his first bout of chemo.)

Back to March 1996. I was being pumped full of chemotherapy, which causes nausea, and radiation, which causes nausea, and AIDS medications, which cause nausea, and none of the prescription antinausea medications were working. The nausea, however, ended instantly with medical marijuana. With one puff of marijuana, the nausea turned to hunger. Thank Mother Nature for that ( Mother Nature is one of Nature's Gods, from the Declaration of Independence ). Medical marijuana has been around for more than 5,000 years and it hasn't killed anyone.

It is astonishing how well it works.

And you have to understand how serious it is when you can't keep your medication down -- it's not just uncomfortable, if you can't keep that medication down, it's not going to save your life. And that is the important point. We're talking about life and death when we're talking about treating AIDS and cancer. Half the people not taking the AIDS combination therapy -- some 40 percent of all who try -- do so because of nausea. This is a shame, because the AIDS medications are working so well for those who can tolerate them. I am one of them. But 20 percent stop because of nausea. I wonder how many of those 20 percent, if they had access to legal inexpensive marijuana, would have that same problem. Every day people are denied cancer chemotherapy because the doctors stop treatment knowing that they will die of malnutrition if they go another day without eating. Nausea is an unsolved problem of medicine and marijuana is the finest antinausea medication known to science.

At the same time our leaders have lied about this consistently. Our leaders whom we trust, whom we look up to. From the Democratic president to the Drug Czar to the Republican leaders in Congress, in both the House and the Senate. They have lied to us about medical marijuana. They have lied to us about the harm of marijuana. There is no more benign medicinal substance known to human beings. And we have been lied to about this. And so this was my first epiphany, watching my normal run to the bathroom, with one puff of marijuana, turn into a meandering raid on the kitchen. And with that epiphany I said, "I am not going to rest until medical marijuana is available to every sick person who needs it in the United States."

And here I think it is important to note that the IMMEDIATE effect of cannabis on nausea is due to the way in which the cannabis is used. It is SMOKED. By smoking, the cannabis does not have to go through the liver via the stomach and make its way to the brain to turn off the nausea, a process that can take up to two hours. When cannabis is smoked, it goes from the lungs to the heart to the brain within half a minute. Actually, the time is more like 2-15 seconds.

Recently, the Drug Czar specifically noted that the federal govt. finds no medical use for "smoked marijuana." Well, that must be because the federal govt. doesn't want to find it because the evidence has been available for decades. The Obama administration is lying about smoked cannabis and is using that lie as a foundation for the continuation of prohibition. They are lying. Let's be clear. They are lying about science.

This is why I have come to the conclusion that prohibition is the creationism of social conservatism in the realm of medicine.

In the face of absolute proof regarding a scientific issue, prohibitionists are as idiotic as creationists - but are more harmful to society. It has been more than a decade since the federal govt has had to answer for their crimes against the American people regarding prohibition. It seems like we need a Scopes trial for the prohibitionists...a hearing on the science.

One of the people that the anti-science prohibitionists killed was Peter McWilliams. Here is how they killed him.

On June 14, Natalie Fisher went to Peter McWilliams' home, where she worked as housekeeper to the wheelchair-bound victim of AIDS and cancer. In the bathroom on the second floor, she found his life-less body. He had choked to death on his own vomit... (Peter) was diagnosed with AIDS and non-Hodgkins lymphoma in early 1996...In 1996, California voters enacted a law legalizing the use of marijuana by people, like Peter, who needed it for medical reasons...Like many people stricken with AIDS or cancer, he had great difficulty keeping down the drugs that controlled or mitigated those afflictions. He began to smoke marijuana to control the drug-induced nausea. It saved his life: by early 1998, both his cancer and his AIDS were under control.

After the Clinton administration announced it would ignore the state law and continue to prosecute marijuana users who needed the drug to stay alive, it remained very difficult for others who needed medical marijuana to get the drug. So Peter helped finance the efforts of Todd McCormick to cultivate marijuana for distribution to those who needed it for medical reasons....His articulate advocacy of legalizing medical marijuana brought him to the attention of federal authorities, who got wind of Todd McCormick's attempt to grow marijuana for medicinal purposes and of Peter's involvement with it. And it came to pass that in the early morning of December 17, 1997, federal agents invaded his home and business, and confiscated a wide array of his property ( including his computers, one of whose hard disks contained the book he was writing ). In July 1998 they arrested him on charges of conspiring to grow marijuana.

His mother and brother put up their homes as bond and he was released from jail to await his trial. One of the conditions of his bail was that he smoke no marijuana. Unwilling to risk the homes of his mother and brother, he obeyed the order. His viral load, which had fallen to undetectable levels, now soared to dangerous levels:

"Unable to keep down the life-saving prescription medications, by November 1998, four months after my 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 .... 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" said Peter.

http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n948/a03.html

This is important to note: Because the federal govt, specifically the federal govt under the leadership of the Clinton administration, refused to honor the will of California voters regarding medical marijuana, Peter McWilliams' health deteriorated to the point that he became wheelchair bound.

Before, when he was able to use medical marijuana, his health improved.

After, when the federal govt brought the full force of their power down on someone who was acting legally, and, imo, morally, that person suffocated on his own vomit. The federal govt. had proof, in the person of Peter McWilliams, that smoked marijuana was saving his life and they ignored this - and killed him because of their refusal to acknowledge the proof before their own eyes.

Democrats have been WORSE for people who deal with illness and use medical marijuana for their conditions than Republicans at the federal level. Under the Clinton administration, the DEA engaged in more raids than his Republican predecessor. The same holds true with Obama. This history must change. Democrats must become the rational party regarding medical cannabis.

You have to wonder if they want to look tough - but, you know, kicking cancer patients when they're down is more like the act of a sociopath, not someone who cares about the well being of society.

Nevertheless, the helmet hair heads in D.C. and other political offices can't seem to shake the idea that an attack on marijuana is an attack on the 60s counter culture. Hey, guess what? The 60s are over. So is Nixon and his hatred for those Jews who were smoking pot. The social conservatives cannot even win on legislation to oppress women in Mississippi, fercryinoutloud. The 60s won - deal with it. Climb to the roof of your helmet-haired head, get into your mental helicopters and remove yourselves from your outdated positions.

Oh, and Todd McCormick, the person who was arrested for growing marijuana? He was also a cancer patient.

The War on Drugs in action.

http://www.drugwarrant.com/articles/drug-war-victim/

[tpsbmam]

1. What a powerful counterargument for those who pooh-pooh the import of the medical cannabis issue

Is it considered spamming or whatever the terminology is if you post this again in GD? This is incredibly powerful and it's not getting seen by enough people in this forum. Just a suggestion -- you can blame it on me suggesting you repost it if you want to take the heat off yourself!

[RainDog]

2. I think I could but

I think it's better if someone just links to the original instead...which I am not going to do, but if you feel so inclined... lol.

[SteveW]

3. There are two kinds of medical cannabis patients: Those who are in treatment...

...and those who will be.

I started early.

[SteveW]

4. Systemic and public cruelty is part and parcel of prohibition...

I remember this story when it happened. The authorities were sticking out their belt buckle and husslin' their nuts as they did it. This is not unusual when prohibition becomes deeply corrupted by its own pumped-up morality and the sure knowledge that ain't nobody gonna do anything about it.

And no one did.

We can expect this kind of cruelty to occur again; it is by design, it is meant to infuriate and render any critic impotent. But it is also the only thing police power has left in a dying scheme. If the scheme is prosperous, you would see relatively little of this. But this manner of prohibition is on shaky legs, so we can expect more cruelty and arbitrary pain-for-pleasure tactics by law enforcement, and they will expect the public to walk away.

This time we won't.
__________________

"Hey, man," said the tourist, "where's the best place to smoke a little weed on East Sixth?"
"Right in the middle of the street," the old hippy answered, passing his joint.

[RainDog]

5. This was a truly shameful moment

Because it is absolutely proof that prohibition is killing people in this nation for no reason other than pigheadedness.

[SteveW]

6. It's more than pigheadedness. I think Huxley summed it up best:

"The surest way to work up a crusade in favor of some good cause is to promise people they will have a chance of maltreating someone. To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behavior 'righteous indignation' -- this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats." ALDOUS HUXLEY (1894-1963), Chrome Yellow, 1921.

We who have been brought up on the secular Bible-quote of our time, "Follow the Money Trail," have lost sight of the sweat, passion, and hatred which motivates these prohibitionist causes. We remain woefully and willfully ignorant by reducing all to economic determinism.

[RainDog]

8. I'm going to use your quote for my sig line

thanks for including it here.

[gymshoes]

7. Murdered by the cops...

Peter McWilliams was one of my few real heroes.
His was murder in the first degree, planned and pre-meditated.
The pigs denied him the medicine that kept him alive.
I hate cops...