Pubdate: Wed, 20 Jul 2005
Source: San Diego Union Tribune (CA)
Copyright: 2005 Union-Tribune Publishing Co.
Contact:  http://www.uniontrib.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/386
Note: Does not print LTEs from outside it's circulation area.
Author: Jeff McDonald
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mmj.htm (Cannabis - Medicinal)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?232 (Chronic Pain)

MEDICAL POT ACTIVIST HONORED

He Took His Own Life After Long Legal Fight

More than 100 people showed up at San Diego City Hall yesterday to 
pay respects to Steven Joe McWilliams, the longtime medical marijuana 
activist who killed himself last week after a lengthy fight with 
federal authorities.

As part of the tribute, organizers handed out single-stemmed white 
roses and copies of the suicide note McWilliams left behind. They in 
no way avoided the grim circumstances of his death, which came on his 
51st birthday.

Mourners lined up by the dozens to post messages in a notebook set up 
beside a platform, where speaker after speaker remembered McWilliams 
as a tireless champion of patients' rights.

"Hero. Martyr. Friend," one signatory wrote.

Barbara MacKenzie, who was McWilliams' partner in life and in running 
the Shelter from the Storm medical marijuana resource center, urged 
the lunch-hour audience to carry on McWilliams' activist spirit.

She pledged to continue fighting for patients' rights to grow and use 
marijuana under California's Compassionate Use Act despite a ruling 
from the U.S. Supreme Court last month confirming the federal 
government's authority to prosecute marijuana users.

"This was an injustice not only to him but to thousands of patients 
who can't use their medicine," MacKenzie said.

After her initial comments, MacKenzie read McWilliams' suicide note 
out loud while much of the audience followed along silently. When she 
got to the part where he criticized the government for denying him 
medicinal relief and for threatening to lock him up, she briefly lost 
her composure.

"This was my last chance to help the medical marijuana movement and 
others that I care about," she said, quoting McWilliams, her voice 
cracking with emotion. "That's what so much of this has been about - 
my right to use a medicine that worked for me."

Several AIDS patients and cancer survivors attended the service, some 
of them in wheelchairs. Many medical marijuana supporters credit the 
drug with stimulating appetites, easing the side effects of 
chemotherapy or otherwise reducing pain and discomfort. McWilliams 
smoked marijuana to relieve chronic pain he suffered after a motorcycle crash.

More than a dozen speakers took to the podium to offer remembrances 
and tributes to McWilliams, who was arrested at least four times for 
testing the limits of the state medical marijuana law.

McWilliams was long regarded as something of a gadfly. He regularly 
showed up at City Council meetings to urge the local officials to 
implement the state law. His tenacity paid off in 2003, when San 
Diego became the largest city in the country to adopt medical 
marijuana guidelines.

An aide to Mayor Pro Tem Toni Atkins read a statement at the memorial 
calling McWilliams "a tenacious and relentless force to be reckoned 
with" and concluding that "public comment at our City Council 
meetings will never be the same without his smiling face and cannabis leis."

McWilliams often wore marijuana leaf necklaces or carried a small 
marijuana plant to help make his point to council members.

One of his attorneys called it a privilege to represent McWilliams. 
David Zugman told mourners that no matter how serious his client's 
legal troubles were, McWilliams never failed to ask Zugman how his 
children were doing, and what other important things were going on.

"It is a great sadness of mine that I wasn't able to win his case," 
said Zugman, who had been appealing McWilliams' 2003 federal 
conviction for illegal cultivation. That appeal has now been dismissed.

The service coincided with other remembrances arranged by medical 
marijuana supporters in at least 15 other cities.

In Washington, D.C., 50 people marched from the Supreme Court to the 
Capitol, carrying placards declaring "The Federal Government Killed 
Steve McWilliams. Let Me Tell You How," Steph Sherer of the advocacy 
group Americans for Safe Access told the San Diego crowd.

At that, scores of people clapped loudly.
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MAP posted-by: Beth