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"News that's not known, or not known enough." Helen & Harry Highwater's cranky weblog of news and opinion. |
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Another marijuana-related death Supreme Court kills California pot-smoker by Jeff McDonald, San Diego Union-Tribune July 17, 2005 In the same public square where he poked government in the eye so many times, where he smoked marijuana in the open and even handed out samples, Steve McWilliams will be heard from one last time Tuesday.
Friends and supporters of McWilliams, who killed himself last week in a desperate effort to end his suffering and draw attention to his cause, will gather at City Hall at noon to remember the activist who pushed San Diego into becoming the largest city in the nation to adopt a medical marijuana law. McWilliams' suicide Monday, the day he turned 51, has reverberated far beyond San Diego County. Activists in at least 15 other cities are planning events to coincide with the San Diego memorial. They expect the gatherings will be part remembrance and part protest over the way they say McWilliams had been targeted by the federal government. In Washington D.C., supporters are planning a candlelight vigil encircling the Capitol. Medical marijuana advocates said they want to get a proposed law, aimed at permitting a medical-necessity defense in federal cases, named after McWilliams. "He was a pioneer in the movement," said Claudia Little, a retired nurse from Point Loma who is helping to organize the San Diego service. "He was the one who brought the issue of the implementation of Proposition 215 to the forefront."
McWilliams almost single-handedly forced the San Diego City Council to address Proposition 215, the 1996 initiative that for the first time gave ailing Californians the legal right to use marijuana to ease symptoms. Week after week for years on end he showed up at meetings, often carrying a small marijuana plant, to urge the council to take action to implement the state law. His activism took many forms; he alternately ran for City Council and sued the city for allegedly violating his civil rights. Ultimately, his efforts paid off. The council formed a task force to draw up medical marijuana guidelines, and in 2003 it passed an ordinance outlining how many plants patients would be allowed to grow in San Diego. McWilliams served on the committee for a time but quit when he felt the process had become bogged down in bureaucracy. "There were clearly others, but Steve McWilliams was the driving force" behind those guidelines, said Councilwoman Toni Atkins, who plans to request that the City Council adjourn tomorrow's session in his memory. "He was willing to take on that role when many people would not, or couldn't." Barbara MacKenzie, McWilliams' longtime partner and co-founder of the Shelter from the Storm medical marijuana resource center, said Tuesday's memorial service at City Hall will be a fitting tribute.
The service will include eulogies from McWilliams' friends and fellow medical marijuana advocates, but MacKenzie said anyone who shows up will get a turn on the podium. "That was his true belief, getting people to realize they have the power to change and improve their lives, if they just join together and speak," she said. McWilliams drew the attention of federal agents in 2002 after he smoked pot and gave away small bags of the drug on the steps of City Hall to protest a raid on a medical marijuana cooperative in Santa Cruz County. In 2003 he was convicted of illegal cultivation and received a six-month federal prison term. [Unknown News editor notes: McWilliams was not allowed to mention his illness in court.] The sentence was stayed pending appeal, but he was not allowed to use marijuana while the case was unresolved. When he died, McWilliams was in serious and persistent pain from an earlier motorcycle accident, a condition he said was made worse by his abstinence from marijuana. In a note he left at his side, he said the discomfort was too much for him to bear and he hoped his suicide would help change the government's position on the medicinal value of marijuana, MacKenzie said. Last month's Supreme Court ruling confirming the government's authority to prosecute medical marijuana patients struck a severe blow to McWilliams' hope of winning his appeal, MacKenzie said. He was afraid of going to jail but also feared waiting in limbo for months or years. He had often said the prescription painkillers he used as a substitute for marijuana were far more expensive and left him nauseous and weakened. Thousands of patients across California sympathized with McWilliams' plight, MacKenzie said, but they are afraid to confront the federal government because they could be prosecuted. She hopes that will start to change Tuesday. "We want to take the fear away as part of the healing," she said. "We know it's there." Leaders of the activist group Americans for Safe Access have been pushing supporters around the country to express their outrage at what they say is the government's role in McWilliams' decision to end his life. "Steve McWilliams was tortured by the federal government because of the medication he needed," said Steph Sherer, executive director of Berkeley-based Americans for Safe Access. "There have been hundreds of messages mourning Steve and wishing Barbara well -- and really pointing fingers at the federal government." In addition to Washington, D.C., where activists plan a candlelight vigil and walk around the Capitol, mourners are planning memorial services in Texas, Pennsylvania, Utah, Oregon, Indiana and Colorado, McWilliams' home state. "Patients are having to suffer, even though laws have been passed," said Jim Greig, a medical marijuana patient from Eugene, Ore., who is organizing the event there. "We still don't have access to our medicine. As originally published
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