The Ojai Post

But let us agree, to begin with, that if people are sick, they deserve to benefit from anything that makes them feel better. What kind of bigoted humbug is eager to challenge that?

As for sickness, who is it that has the arrogance to declare that if the sickness is mental, rather than physical, the patient has no right to a remedy that can alleviate the pain? We all know people so screwed up that only something like a drug can get them out of their funk. Thus, the success of Big Pharm’s Valium and its billion-dollar clones.

It’s almost half a century since “underground papers” ( precursors of the less-radical, commercialized “alternative press”) universally sought two things: ending the Vietnam War and the legalization of marihuana. Even by then, millions had become aware that, despite the posturing of drug-crazed pols, that here was a blessed herb that could benefit the world.

Everybody thought then that the rest of civilization would come to its senses and recognize this. Yet here we are 40 years later, still with enough defiantly ignorant simpletons insisting that boo is a “gateway” to more lethal drugs, when precisely the opposite is probably true: that legalizing it, is offering a step back for the addicted. Surely this is a less-harmful remedy than discredited methadone?

Let’s face the fact that, after several thousand years of use, hemp is here to stay. And currently it’s in the news as it again becomes legitimized through the back door. Which happens to be the way everything becomes legal when the tipping point arrives. Who could even guess at the number of people who have smoked marijuana? It has to be in the billions.

Maybe medical marijuana, should be overseen by some kind of Hemp Authority. Millions of voters might support a proposal like that, and which would offer a rational and acceptable concept that the many cowardly pols could exploit.

But back to the abundance of marijuana clinics. We don’t want them in every part of town just as we don’t want liquor stores on every corner. And if they’re not legalized they’re ripping their patients off and selling to minors. Alcohol makes people aggressive and shortens lives, including their own, but an aggressive pothead is an oxymoron.

And the first death from a marijuana overdose is yet to be reported.

Paul Krassner tells the story of political victim.

Peter McWilliams was a dedicated activist in the medical marijuana movement. He survived cancer but the pills that enabled him to control his AIDS nauseated him.. Ironically, if he threw up his lunch, the regurgitation would also include the nausea-producing pills he needed to stay alive. Smoking pot would both increase his appetite and counteract the nausea.

In 1998, he was arrested as the kingpin of a conspiracy to cultivate and distribute medical marijuana. In his essay Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do: The Absurdity of Consensual Crime in a Free Society, he had chronicled the cruelty of putting people in prison who had not harmed anyone. At his trial he was denied a medical-marijuana defense. and a federal judge prohibited him from smoking his medicine as he awaited sentencing.

"Something that a lot of people don't realize," he told me” , is that when you smoke marijuana regularly--several times a day--it loses its euphoric effect. The medical benefits continue--relief of nausea, pain (physical or emotional), spasticity, excessive eye pressure (glaucoma)--but the euphoria effects go away. Simply put, recreational marijuana you use to get high; medical marijuana you use to get by."

He was subject to random drug tests for two years as his sentencing date was repeatedly postponed. His AIDS medications caused nausea, but he couldn't smoke pot to keep it down. And he vomited, day after day. Two months before he was due to be sentenced, he was found dead in his bathtub. He had died from asphyxiation. He had choked to death on his own vomit.

Peter McWilliams was murdered by a system of power without compassion.

John Wilcock has been studying marijuana since 1961. His book, The Weed That Changed the World has never found a publisher. His articles on a wide range of topics can be found on http://www.ojaiorange.com/

Published in the Ojai Valley News, October, 28, 2009.

Note from Suza, recommended reading: The Emperor Wears No Cothes, by Jack Herer, Drug Crazy, by Mike Gray and Food of the Gods, by Terence McKenna.