Another casualty in the War on Drugs
Peter McWilliams died June 14th, 2000. He was fifty years old.
"So what?" one says. "Yes, it's sad when anyone dies, but it happens. Let us mourn him for a moment and live on."
Peter McWilliams was murdered.
"Well, this is slightly different." one says with a sense of concern. "We shall not abide a murderer in our community. Tell us, who murdered him, and how, so that we may punish them?"
The War on Drugs murdered Peter McWilliams. He choked to death on his own vomit, lying in his bathroom.
The nausea was caused by the cocktail of medicine required to keep him alive in his battle against AIDS and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. Until his arrest on conspiracy charges due to his efforts to distribute marijuana plants to cooperatives that served ill patients, he repressed his nausea with marijuana. Judge George King ordered McWilliams to not use marijuana during the trial, and as his mother and brother had risked their houses for his bond, he felt obligated to go through treatment without its use.
His alternative methods incorporated the synthetic THC Marinol that the government wishes the terminally ill to use in lieu of marijuana as an anti-emetic. They were still painful and time-consuming, and they ultimately failed, and now he is dead, murdered by the War on Drugs.
This must end.