Peter McWilliams

PETER McWILLIAMS has been writing about his passions since 1967. In that year, he became passionate about what most seventeen-year-olds are passionate about—love—and wrote Come Love With Me & Be My Life. This began a series of poetry books which have sold nearly four million copies. ... Personal freedom, individual expression, and the right to live one's own life, as long as one does not harm the person or property of another, have long been his passions. He wrote about them in the 1993 book (revised in 1996) Ain't Nobody's Business if You Do: The Absurdity of Consensual Crimes in Our Free Country.

McWilliams was an author on toleration, love, computers, and other subjects -- more than 30 books altogether which have reportedly sold some 6 million copies. His book on meditation knocked The Joy of Sex off the #1 spot on the New York Times bestseller list. ... He sparked controversies aplenty which led to his appearances on the most-watched TV talk shows including The Oprah Winfrey Show, Larry King, Sally Jessy Raphael and, in years past, Donahue, and The Regis Philbin Show. He was harassed by government agents for using marijuana to ease the torment of AIDS, from which he eventually died.

McWilliams, who suffered from AIDS and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, had used marijuana to suppress the nausea that was a common side-effect to the potent medications ... The marijuana was legal, thanks to California's Proposition 215 ... passed in 1996 ... However, in late 1997, McWilliams was arrested by federal drug agents and charged with conspiracy to grow and sell marijuana. At the time, McWilliams said he was innocent of any criminal intent. ... When his case went to trial, a federal judge ruled that McWilliams could not mention his illnesses — or introduce as evidence any of the documented benefits of medical marijuana.

The third astonishing thing about Peter was his remarkable generosity of spirit. He always offered help and encouragement to others, no matter what his own circumstances were. A few months ago, I was contacted by a publisher with a request to reprint an article of Peter's that had appeared in Liberty. The publisher was one of the few who routinely is willing to pay for reprint rights, so I called Peter with the good news, and asked him how much he'd like me to ask for his article. "Nothing," he said. "I want to encourage people to reprint my writing on the drug war."

In 1967, at age 17, McWilliams began his career by writing poetry. He went on to self-publish books about meditation, coping with depression, surviving the loss of a loved one, and computers, among other varied subjects. He has also authored a popular "Life 101" series of self-help books. In 1993 he published Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do: The Absurdity of Consensual Crimes in Our Free Country; a revised edition was put out a few years later. McWilliams would soon fall victim to the same noxious interventionism of the Busybody State that is the subject of his book.

Peter [McWilliams] was a wry, mythogenic guy, humorous, affectionate, articulate, shrewd, sassy. He courted anarchy at the moral level ... We were old friends, and I owe my early conversion to word processing to his guidebook on how to do it. Over the years we corresponded, and he would amiably twit my conservative opinions. When I judged him to have gone rampant on his own individualistic views in his book, I wrote him to that effect. I cherish his reply—nice acerbic deference, the supreme put-down ... Imagine such a spirit ending its life at 50, just because they wouldn't let him have a toke.