Supreme Court Defiles Peter McWilliams' Corpse

A good man named Peter McWilliams, a casualty of the Drug War, unwittingly gave this blog its name, thanks to his eye-opening book Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do; The Absurdity of Consensual Crimes in Our Free Country. I had planned to run my commemoration of Peter next week, on the fifth anniversary of his death.

But I won't wait. I can't. I want to talk about Peter today, right now, urgently, with love and anger duking it out in my chest. Love for a man who, though we never even met, helped teach me the meaning of personal responsibility and freedom. And deep, hot anger because the Supreme Court has just affirmed that pot is always a fearsome thing, and that it's somehow defensible to let people like Peter — people with AIDS, cancer, scoliosis, brain tumors, chronic nausea, and various other ailments — waste away in agony, rather than allow them the relief that medical marijuana brings.

I wrote the commentary below shortly after Peter's death, and I ran it in the magazine of which I was then the Editor — Advertising Age's Creativity. I'm publishing it again in this spot, unchanged. I'll do it next year, too, and the year after that, and so on, in honor of a smart, creative, caring, funny, decent man who was literally hounded to death once a callous, Kafkaesque justice system sunk its claws into him.

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The Ad That Killed Its Maker

by Rogier van Bakel

When Peter McWilliams took out an ad, it killed him. Literally.

The ad, an open letter to the movie community, ran in Daily Variety in December 1997. "Where is Hollywood’s answer ... to the ten million marijuana arrests since 1972?" Peter asked. "Where is the Gentleman’s Agreement or To Kill a Mockingbird or Platoon dramatizing the insane cruelty of the War on Drugs?" He also blasted Drug Enforcement Administration officials as "arrogant" and "selfrighteous."

It wasn’t unfamiliar territory for Peter. In 1993, he’d published an unputdownable, thought-provoking tome called Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do — the Absurdity of Consensual Crimes in Our Free Country (updated in 1996, and available for free here, in electronic form). The book, which made it onto the New York Times bestseller list, documented U.S. politicians’ attempts to legislate what people may and may not see, read, and ingest. Peter launched a particularly formidable argument against drug prohibition.

In 1996, when AIDS and cancer entered his life, he became an advocate for medical marijuana, testifying before the National Academy of Sciences and giving numerous media interviews. "As a recent cancer, chemotherapy, and radiation survivor who uses medicinal marijuana to keep down the anti-AIDS drugs that are keeping me alive," Peter wrote in the Variety ad, "I can personally attest to marijuana’s anti-nausea effect."

Exactly seventeen days after the ad ran, the government responded the only way it knows how: with a full-scale raid. Eight DEA agents, guns drawn, stormed Peter’s house in Laurel Canyon, California, and confiscated his computer, his backup drives, and various research materials. Peter readily admitted to growing some marijuana for his own medical use, "in the time-honored tradition of Washington, Jefferson, and Timothy Leary."

The feds had no arrest warrant at the time of the raid, but they finally came for him in July of 1998. The indictment against Peter made much of the fact that as the publisher of Prelude Press, his own publishing company where he employed eighteen people, Peter had given an advance to an author for a book on medical marijuana. That writer, a fellow medical-marijuana patient, used a portion of the money to grow his own medicine. The feds saw Prelude Press as the source of the funds the man had used to finance his little crop. So they treated Peter like a drug kingpin.

It’s an interesting piece of logic. If a Microsoft engineer uses some of his salary to visit a prostitute, should Bill Gates be arrested on federal pandering charges?

More importantly, did Peter really break the law? Depends on whom you ask. California explicitly allows the use of medical marijuana under Proposition 215, which voters passed into California constitutional law in 1996. The federal government, however, does not recognize a state's right to adopt its own drug legislation. So what Peter did was perfectly legal in his own state; it just didn’t sit well with some drugfighting hard-liners three thousand miles away in Washington D.C., who decided to dispatch an assault team to an increasingly frail AIDS and cancer patient.

One of the conditions of Peter's bail was a weekly urine test. Were he to test positive for illicit drugs, he'd return to jail, pending his trial. Besides, his mother (in her seventies) had put up her house as collateral for the bond. The feds could seize her home and evict her if Peter violated his bail terms. So Peter was forced to be sick as a dog on most days — much sicker than he would have been if he'd been allowed to smoke marijuana, a plant whose medical benefits are well-documented. Now frequently unable to hold down down his medication, Peter grew weaker and became wheelchair-bound.

Last month, when he was at home, taking a bath, the nausea overcame him once more. He choked to death on his own vomit. He was 50 years old. He died because the government wouldn't let him have a toke. Viewed another way, he died because he had the temerity to run that ad.

The prosecutors commented they were "saddened" by Peter’s death.

No doubt, so are the smart, well-meaning creatives on Madison Avenue who make ad campaigns for the Partnership for a Drug-Free America, propagating a War on Drugs that is making more casualties by the day.

[© Crain Communications and Rogier van Bakel, 2000. Originally published in Advertising Age's Creativity.]

Comments

[Melissa]

You know, when I first found this blog I read your info page. You mentioned Nobody's Business and it sounded good (there are so few libertarian type books out there) so I went out and bought it. (Well, actually, I had to order it, but now I have it.)

It's pretty good. And his story is a sad one (one that, apparently, a lot of people go through).

[Sieg Pedde]

Saddening and maddening. Why do we put up with this B.S.? Are things ever going to change?

[M. Simon]

It is worse than you know almost all chronic drug use is self medication. So we are having a war on the sick.

Addiction or Self Medication?

[Gregory L. Marx]

After reading Peter's Introduction to the above noted book I was taken aback to the similar style of writing I had read many, many years ago when I first dived into computers. "Word Processing on the Kaypro ..."

But this title didn't show up on Peter's website so I wasn't 100% sure. After google-ing for a bit I found a copy on Amazon, and sure enough it was the same Peter McWilliams !

All I can say is I'm sorry he suffered. Once again we've lost a *GREAT* American who wrote with humor and compassion. Two traits sorely lacking in today's Americal society.

Rest in Peace Peter !
(and thanks for the laughs)

GLM

[Adam]

This is sad and makes me very angry. A majority of people have no problem with medical marijuana, yet the idiots in Washington keep voting against it. There simply isn't any accountablity. Why can't the public muster any outrage or passion for things beyond sports and American Idol? Disgusting.

[Grinna]

G'day! Grinna from Oz 'ere. What a sorry story. I don't know why he didn't stay in gaol (jail to yanks). There you can score anything you need, anytime you want! My bro had a good mate with a drinking problem that kept getting busted DUI; so they throw him in gaol to "cure"/punish him. He came out with a smack habit, OD'd & died. Here in Oz 3 grams of pot costs $50, is delivered to your door in 20 minutes (faster than a pizza) & you cop a $200 fine. Whoopee!!! Hmm, gottta go and light up a race horse. Cheers:-)

[Phil]

I wonder what the copyright status of this book is.

It would make me immensely happy if someone could contact the rights holders and possibly put up a Wiki using this text, for further generations to annotate and change and grow...

[Paul Revere]

The Government and the FDA and the drug companies are not going to give up their lucrative scam.
Marijuana would replace several of their most expensive drugs with no side-effects is another reason why.
See the scam goes like this , the CIA and the DEA bring in the drugs in their diplomatic pouches, sell them to the dealers in the big cities and then bust the people that buy from those dealers. They get to take your car , your house and your money by way of forfeiture.
Even though the Government brought in the drugs.
Now isn't this sweet?
Its all a big scam. It's called the war on drugs.

[James Anderson Merritt]

I will never forget the forceful, righteous speech that Peter gave at the 1996 Libertarian Party convention, before CSPAN cameras and broadcast nationwide. I had tears in my eyes -- as I do now, simply to recall it. The image of his gesture of defiance at Gen. McCaffery and the rest of the drug warriors haunts me to this day, and especially since I learned that he had been raided and prosecuted, undoubtably for his high profile temerity. I wonder if that image haunts the General or any of his minions? How can they sleep at night? I'll bet they need sedation.

The War on Drugs wasn't worth the death of anyone, certainly not even one US citizen, definitely not a US citizen who got up and spoke truth to power as poignantly and accurately as McWilliams did.

Although I never met him in person, I bought and read "Nobody's Business," and ever since have regarded McWilliams as my teacher. Like several here, I am angry beyond words, not only at his shabby treatment at government hands, but also the government's continued assertion of prohibitive authority in this area of human life, with the Raich decision as their latest rape of Liberty, constitution and federalism be damned.

Perhaps Hollywood's "Gentleman's Agreement" or "Platoon" for the drug war will be McWilliams' story. I can think of no better protagonist to get people thinking, and to get them angry, in the tradition of those other classic films.

So where is the script? The production crew? The cast? The cameras? "Let's roll!"

[John Reed]

Great blog. It's nice to be here! Naked truth: http://anthony.ianniciello.net/blog/archives/000079.html , Small brain blog

[Petermcwilliamstribute]

Rogier,
Once again thank you for such an illuminating and eye-opening portrait of an American hero who made a mark upon the world and upon our hearts.

Thank you so much for your willingness to re-post the honest and beautiful thoughts you have conveyed.

Hugs to you!
--Peter McWilliams Tribute--