End the War on Freedom

FROM MOUNTAIN MEDIA
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATED JUNE 25, 2000
THE LIBERTARIAN, By Vin Suprynowicz
Drug war hypocrites kill a troublesome author

Peter McWilliams, 50, author of the 1993 book "Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do: The Absurdity of Consensual Crimes in Our Free Country," and accomplished public speaker on libertarian topics, died at home in Los Angeles June 14.. Struggling for breath in his bathtub, Peter choked to death on his own vomit.

But it was not an accident.

McWilliams suffered from both cancer and AIDS. A prescribed cocktail of toxic drugs was capable of holding his viral load to zero -- in effect, producing complete remission. Problem was, these drugs produced such severe nausea that McWilliams was unable to keep them -- or anything else -- down.

Fortunately, it turned out a natural and harmless herb exists which was almost fully effective in relieving McWilliams' nausea -- whereas a synthetic variant of the herb's dominant ingredient, the patented and thus pharmaceutically profitable Marinol -- proved only one-third as effective.

Unfortunately, following the effective yellow journalism campaign of William Randolph Hearst to identify this herb, Indian hemp, in the public mind as the dreaded tool of white women's seduction by minority Lotharios -- "Marihuana" -- the forces of racism and repression managed to outlaw it, progressively if unconstitutionally, between the years 1916 and 1934.

Fortunately, the citizens of California since realized that mistake, and in the autumn of 1996 they re-legalized marijuana there for medical use on a doctor's "recommendation" -- no prescription required -- by a 55 percent majority. Seven other states have since followed California's sensible lead.

Unfortunately, cops operating in California -- the same ones who used to snarl "If you don't like the law, change it" -- no longer pay any attention to the law. Now they just break into people's homes, trash or seize their property, and kidnap them because they feel like it.

"On Dec. 17, 1997, federal drug and tax agents raided McWilliams' home and offices, confiscating manuscripts and equipment and effectively shutting down his publishing business," according to J.D. Tuccille of Freedom Network News (www.free-market.net.) "The ostensible reason for the raid was a book advance paid to Todd McCormick, an author and fellow marijuana activist who rented a home where he wrote and grew marijuana with the money."

Both men said the marijuana grown in the Bel Air mansion was intended to supply buyers' cooperatives that serve patients in California.

Mind you, this "crime" was committed, the arrests made, and the case proceeded in its entirety after the popular vote to legalize this activity.

Wait, it gets better. Why do you suppose the scum who run the War on Drugs in California decided to prosecute this case in federal court?

One might imagine a defendant like McWilliams would have had an open-and-shut dismissal, once he explained his deadly illness, presented medical testmony that only the medical benefits of marijuana were keeping him alive, and finally introduced evidence that he was being prosecuted in spite of the popular victory of Prop 215 in November of 1996 -- that is to say, "the law."

Ha ha. You see, in federal court, Judge George H. King ruled none of that information could be introduced into evidence. McWilliams couldn't even argue that the Ninth Amendment voids any and all federal drug laws. Nope. All disallowed. Any lawyer who tried to mention any of these facts to McWilliams' federal jury -- carefully screened in advance to eliminate any potential juror who opposed the War on Drugs, of course -- would have been arrested, jailed, and disbarred.

Deprived of the opportunity to enter any of the facts which would have constituted his only sensible, valid, and true defense, McWilliams had no choice but to cop a plea in hopes of getting a reduced sentence. He was awaiting sentencing for his "crime" at the time of his death.

"Federal Judge George King ordered him not to use medical marijuana while he was on federal bond," explains McWilliams' friend, Don Wirtshafter. "Because his mother and brother had put up their houses for this bond" -- and because he was subject to periodic urine tests, of course -- "Peter felt obliged to follow this order."

As a result, McWilliams' viral count soared and he spent long hours in bed, fighting nausea. Unable to work, he defaulted on bankruptcy payments and recently lost his home.

By thus violating the law which holds any adult of normal intellect responsible for acts which a reasonable man might expect to cause the death of another, Judge King -- along with all the other sadists still prosecuting the War on Drugs -- was directly responsible for the death of Peter McWilliams, whom they singled out and killed primarily for his outspoken political opinions.

"Peter McWilliams was a brilliant author and American patriot who was killed for his political beliefs -- by an overdose of government," said our mutual friend Steve Kubby, of Laguna Beach, this week. Kubby, California's 1996 Libertarian gubernatorial candidate and himself an adrenal cancer survivor being prosecuted for using legal medical marijuana, announced he will seek his party's vice presidential nomination in Anaheim this week "to force a debate about the failed police 'War on Drugs' onto center stage in the November election. ...

"McWilliams' books inspired people to believe in and fight for their rights. Those responsible for the death of Peter have only added fuel to the fire." Kubby, 53, continued. "They killed the messenger, but the very message they tried to smother will burn more brilliantly than ever."

Ironically, the Inquisition-like nature of the McWilliams prosecution was exposed by John Stossel in an interview with McWilliams which aired on ABC'c "20/20 Friday" on June 9, five days before Peter's death. Even the usually statist Barbara Walters shook her head in dismay.

But wait, we're not quite done. Scrunch down and check this out:

"Although personnel files are among the most closely guarded of police secrets, a copy of [that of] Ellis "Max" Johnson II ... was leaked to the media after he entered the academy last fall, sparking a fierce debate over the city's hiring practices," wrote Jesse Katz, under a Denver dateline, in the Los Angeles Times last weekend.

"Nobody expects police departments to hire saints," reporter Katz continued, but "the confessions of Johnson, one of Denver's newest officers, were startling in their candor.

"Under questioning from background investigators, Johnson admitted he had used drugs on approximately 150 occasions -- not just marijuana, but also crack, LSD, speed, PCP, mescaline, Darvon, Valium. ... But Denver's Civil Service Commission, which sets the criteria for police hiring, insisted that the 40-year-old former karate instructor had been clean since 1987 and deserved a second chance. ..."

To become a cop, you understand. Busting teen-agers with nickel bags of dope. Jailing and killing people like Peter McWilliams.

"With their frankness coaxed by a polygraph, 84 percent of Denver's police applicants -- and at least 65 percent of its recent hires -- have acknowledged past experimentation, according to civil service records," reporter Katz continued. "In some cases, officers bust people for acts they themselves have committed. ...

"That police -- the ultimate symbols of order and authority -- are willing to tolerate its use 'tells us that our Draconian system of drug laws bears no resemblance to reality,' said Elliott Currie, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley and the author of 'Crime and Punishment in America.' ...

" 'Let's wake up,' said Paul Torres, the [Denver's Civil Service] Commission's former executive director. 'The days of Mayberry are long gone.' "

OK. I'll buy that. But it also sounds pretty much like what federal Judge George H. King should have said, in dismissing all charges against Peter McWilliams. Don't you think?

The full text of "Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do" is available on the Internet, for free, at www.mcwilliams.com/books/books/aint/.

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Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. His book, "Send in the Waco Killers: Essays on the Freedom Movement, 1993-1998," is available by dialing 1-800-244-2224; or via web site http://www.thespiritof76.com/wacokillers.html.

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Vin Suprynowicz, vin@lvrj.com

"The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it." -- John Hay, 1872

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and thus clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -- H.L. Mencken

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