Peter McWilliams, best selling author of such books as How To Survive the Loss of a Love and Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do: The Absurdity of Consensual Crimes in a Free Society, died on June 14 at his Los Angeles home. He was 50 years old. No cause of death was listed, but he was known to be suffering from AIDS and Hodgkin's lymphoma.

A libertarian and a commander for against War on the War on Drugs, McWilliams was diagnosed with both AIDS and cancer in March of 1996. He was required to take so much medication that he vomited constantly, thus rendering the pills useless. Like many other people, perhaps none of whom wrote a book against victimless crimes. he found that smoking marijuana relieved the nausea, kept the pills in his stomach and allowed him to stay alive.

Oh, but we can't have that, now can we? And in December 1997, soldiers on the side of the War On Drugs, the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) conducted a pre dawn raid on his home and took his computer. The hard drive of the computer contained the only manuscript of his latest book, one on medical marijuana.

In July 1998, he was arrested, handcuffed and hauled off to jail. He was kept there for a several weeks, then released on the proviso that he not use marijuana. To make sure he compiled with the court, he was required to undergo random urine testing. Since his house had been mortgaged for his bail, Peter McWilliams compiled with the court order.

Of course, what gets lost in this is Proposition 215. Proposition 215 ruled that a Californian could take marijuana if counseled to do so by his doctor. This was voted on by the people of California and put into law. The Feds didn't like this one bit. Afterall, marijuana is a vicious and evil substance and cannot therefore be used under any circumstance.

So then comes a case involving two persons, Peter McWilliams and Todd McCormick -- McCormick has fused vertebra from childhood cancer treatments -- charged with conspiring to manufacture marijuana. Which is exactly what they did, growing 4,3000 plants. According to the defense, the plan was to make available these plants to the cannabis clubs as authorized by Prop 215.

The strategy of the defense was to advise the jury on why McWilliams and McCormick did what they did and explain that it was legal under the authority of the Proposition. However, the trail judge, George H. King had other ideas. To quote the ultra conservative, William F. Buckley, who has come to the defense of McWilliams, "King decided to eliminate the Bill of Rights." He decided that the jury would not be allowed to hear that this was legal under California law. Further, he ruled that that medical records of the defendants would be inadmissible. The attorneys would not even be allowed to state that there were certain rulings prohibiting them from bring up certain issues.

So what else could the defense do? Stripped of his only defense, McWilliams accepted a plea bargain for a sentence of five years, which he hoped to spend under house arrest rather than in prison. While awaiting the determination on how he would do his time, he was allowed to post bail and remain at home. There was one catch -- that he stop smoking marijuana. Unable to keep his medicines down, McWilliams choked on his own vomit.

He was just the most recent victim of the War on Drugs, a war that has the forces of the religious right, the anti-Communists from the Cold War era, elected officials on both party lines and an ill informed media working hand in hand to make sure that the war rages on. The disinformation from all these sources have led an ill advised public that all drugs are evil and all drug users should go to jail.

In a speech to the Libertarian Party in 1998, McWilliams said, "Marijuana is the finest anti nausea medication known to science, and our leaders have lied about this consistently. (Arresting people for) medical marijuana is the most hideous example of government interference in the private lives of individuals. It is an outrage within an outrage within an outrage. This is a plant that has never hurt anyone in 5,000 years -- and a record 640,000 people were arrested for it in 1996. That's one every 48 seconds. Gingrich, Clinton, and Gore: These are all pot-head baby boomers," he said. "It's an outrage that they are putting their [fellow Americans] in prison for smoking pot."

Amen, brother. Here's hoping the world you are in now makes more sense than the one you just left.

(If Sting thinks it's brilliant, then it must be brilliant.)

Peter McWilliams' web site is located at http://www.mcwilliams.com. There you can find out more about him as well downloading his books for free. Most bookstores will also carry them and, should they be out of stock, will gladly order them for you. With his death, one wonders how long his web site will remain up.

For McWilliams own account of the DEA raid, please go here: The DEA Wishes Me a Nice Day by Peter McWilliams .

The title of this rant, "The Murder of Peter McWilliams," comes from Harry Browne of the Libertarian Party, who claimed that McWilliams was murdered "by the War on Drugs."

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