LOS ANGELES : By now, vomiting is second nature to Peter
McWilliams. He has no shame about it. Sometimes he even sees the
humor in it.
McWilliams, 50, still laughs about the time he leaned over a
trash can at a political convention, lost his lunch in front of
strangers, then casually wiped his mouth with a cocktail napkin
before continuing the conversation. The other day, at his home high
in the Hollywood Hills, he simply shrugged when he returned from
retching in the bathroom.
You get used to vomiting, he said. You get used to
anything, I suppose. But it's insane that anyone has to go through
this.
McWilliams, who has AIDS and cancer that is in remission, said
he and his doctor know the solution to his suffering: medical
marijuana. He said he knows from experience that it helps him keep
down the powerful drugs he needs to survive and the food he needs
to keep up his strength. Without it, the book publisher and
best-selling author fears he will die.
But for more than a year, McWilliams has been barred from
smoking marijuana while he awaits trial on a variety of
marijuana-related charges. He says he was growing it for his own
consumption, and had not used it for more than 20 years until he
became ill. Federal prosecutors charge he was conspiring to sell it
along with his codefendants, all of them users of medical
marijuana.
Either way, McWilliams's situation underscores the ongoing
conflict between the state and federal governments over the use of
marijuana by AIDS, cancer, and other patients in chronic pain _
despite some medical studies and much anecdotal evidence showing
its palliative benefits.
California voters became the first to approve medical marijuana
for patients with a doctor's approval in November 1996 _ the same
year McWilliams discovered a lump in his neck and learned he had
non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and AIDS. Washington followed last fall, and
several states are considering similar measures. But the federal
government maintains that the sale or distribution of marijuana
remains illegal under all circumstances.
The laws against medical marijuana are crazy in the first
place, said state Senator John Vasconcellos, a Democrat who has
led the charge to legalize medical marijuana and keep it legal in
California. But to say that people who are dying of cancer and
AIDS can't relieve their pain is awful. By denying Peter McWilliams
the right to smoke marijuana while he's out on ($250,000) bail,
they're denying him life.
McWilliams's trial is still a month away. For now, he is mostly
confined to his home, relying on friends to bring him the milk he
gulps by the glassful and the honey roasted peanuts he eats by the
fistful because they do not make him nauseous.
Unable to work, McWilliams finds his Prelude Press bordering on
bankruptcy. Unable to walk even short distances, he requires a
wheelchair for court appearances. The other day, his face dripping
sweat, he nodded off in the hallway while inside the courtroom his
hearing was being postponed.
Of the first time he smoked marijuana after chemotherapy,
McWilliams said, I had this epiphany: Oh my god, this stuff
really works. Then I got mad, furious, thinking about all the
millions of cancer patients who this could be helping.
Repeatedly turned down by a federal judge who says he cannot
authorize someone to break the law, McWilliams now hopes a federal
appellate court, which recently ruled that seriously ill people
should be allowed to use medical marijuana, will give him access to
the only that drug he has found to keep his nausea under control.
Other defendants in federal marijuana cases are expected to mount
similar appeals based on the US 9th Circuit Court of Appeals
decision.
To federal prosecutors, however, McWilliams's case has nothing
to do with medical marijuana and everything to do with a drug ring,
regardless of why the defendants were growing the plants or who was
using them. McWilliams is accused of masterminding the plot, in
part because of the $120,000 that McWilliams says he paid
codefendant Todd McCormick, a medical marijuana patient and
researcher, to write two books on the subject. If convicted, they
could face life in prison.
We all admit to what we've done, said McWilliams, who
previously bought marijuana on the black market or at the cannabis
clubs that had sprung up around California after the passage of the
law known as Proposition 215.
We all grew marijuana; we all used marijuana, he continued.
The 300 plants I had were my own personal stash. Todd was
studying which strains work best for which types of illnesses. I
mean all his plants were labeled.
But federal prosecutors say that is no defense. In fact, they do
not want the defendants to be able to introduce a medical-necessity
defense, discuss the benefits of marijuana, or even mention
Proposition 215 to jurors. Both sides are scheduled to argue their
positions this week before US District Court Judge George King.
The way that I characterize this case is that it involves a
conspiracy to conduct a commercial marijuana-growing operation
involving more than 6,000 plants at four separate growing sites,
said Thom Mrozek, spokesman for the US Attorney's Office in Los
Angeles, which is handling the case. It doesn't matter where they
were going to sell it. It doesn't matter if they say, `I'm doing
this to save my life.' It's illegal to manufacture of cultivate
marijuana under federal law.
If prosecutors succeed in keeping those issues out of court,
McWilliams's attorney, Thomas Bollanco, said the defendants may as
well head straight to prison. Without medical necessity, they have
no case.
We're going to be left unable to answer to the charges because
we can only answer with what's true, and what's true is that these
guys were motivated by their medical needs and Prop 215, said
Bollanco, who recently lost a federal jury trial in Sacramento in
which the judge refused to allow a medical necessity defense.
Yet even on a state level, the answer to the medical marijuana
debate remains murky. Lacking clear-cut guidelines, law enforcement
officials in some jurisdictions actively pursue arrests, others
tend to look the other way. Last year, a task force including
advocates and opponents worked to craft a compromise. This year,
the resulting bill was tabled. Faced with federal opposition,
California Governor Gray Davis has resisted giving it his approval.
But California Attorney General Bill Lockyer, unlike his
predecessor, appears to favor the voters' decision to allow the use
of medical marijuana, although he has called Prop 215 poorly
written and open to too much interpretation. This month, he urged
US Attorney General Janet Reno to let the appellate court ruling
stand.
Possibly turned off by the number of marijuana plants involved _
or by McWilliams' admitted eccentricities _ few have rallied around
his case and some have turned against him. He insisted he is hurt
but not angry or surprised by his isolation. After his arrest,
McWilliams spent almost a month in jail until he could raise the
money to post bail.
I am the representative of all the sick people and what they
are doing to me is only the worst case right now, but there will be
others, McWilliams said. I am living on borrowed time anyway. I
owe this part of my life to luck and modern medical science. But I
can't imagine what the rest of it will be like if they won't let me
use medical marijuana.
