This is as counterintuitive as is the fact that the earth spins on an axis and revolves around the Sun. It is also as fundamental to understanding how the world works. It does not explain quite everything, but if you don’t understand this, nothing can make any sense. McWilliams elucidates this beautifully.)

Author-publisher Peter McWilliams, whose books have appeared five times on the New York Times Bestseller List, announced today his new publishing imprint, Medical Marijuana Press.

"It’s time the truth about medical marijuana was presented by an energetic publishing imprint devoted to that task," said McWilliams. "In the two years since I started using medical marijuana as a result of my AIDS and cancer treatment, I have thoroughly research marijuana, its alleged dangers, and its medical potential. The results have astonished me."

McWilliams is the author or co-author and publisher of more than 35 books over the past 31 years that have sold 10 million copies. All his books are nonfiction. "I’m an investigative reporter," he said, "I research a subject and report what I learned. When it came to medical marijuana, I learned a lot."

"I found that medical marijuana was an effective treatment for dozens of illnesses and, surprisingly, that marijuana is safer than aspirin—safer than table salt, in fact," said McWilliams. "I also learned the War on Drugs has aimed its entire $50-billion-per-year arsenal against medical marijuana, its users, and its advocates. The War on Drugs is now being fought in the sickrooms of America."

By launching Medical Marijuana Press, McWilliams knows he makes himself a visual advocate—and target.

"The DEA seized the computer containing the manuscript for A Question of Compassion and several others on medical marijuana," said McWilliams. "The computer was returned a month later, the data scrambled by a virus that had somehow infected it while in DEA custody. Six weeks and several thousand dollars later, I got back most of my data, but the most recent version of A Question of Compassion was irreparably damaged."

"I consider this a shot fired over my bow from the federal government," McWilliams continued. "The message I took from it: ‘If you drop the medical marijuana books, we’ll leave you alone. You mess with our livelihood by pushing your medical marijuana, and we’ll come after you.’"

In his research, McWilliams discovered that the employees of the Drug War know medical marijuana will topple their lucrative empire. "As soon as the facts about marijuana’s broad medical effectiveness and astonishing safety reach the American public, people will realize they have been lied to by the War-on-Drugs folks for more than half a century," said McWilliams. "America will discover that a safe and effective medicine has been kept from them and their loved ones by federal deception since 1937, and America will not be amused."

"That will be the end of the War on Drugs," said McWilliams, "and the end of the careers of quite a few Drug War employees. For example, the entire DEA—a $1.2-billion-a-year federal agency—is completely unnecessary without marijuana prohibition. The Drug War employees know this, and the campaign to suppress medical marijuana has reached a fevered pace."

McWilliams never considered not publishing his books. "I’ve spent almost a third of a century in the publishing and bookselling industry," said McWilliams. "Unlike the federal government, we take the First Amendment seriously—as though it actually means what it says. Writers, publishers, and booksellers have spent time in jail defending it before. If they arrest me, I’ll be in very good company."

"If the DEA or IRS arrest me, it will be for what I write and what I plan to publish, not for any drug dealing or tax evading I’ve done. I have never sold a drug in my life and I pay my taxes."

"The DEA and the IRS have been investigating me for nine months at a cost to taxpayers of more than $3 million," said McWilliams. "They are trying to make me the godfather of some great Medical Marijuana Mafia, the kingpin of the notorious Medicine Cartel. It’s all nonsense and they know it."

McWilliams is the author or co-author and publisher of such books as How to Survive the Loss of a Love, DO IT! You Can’t Afford the Luxury of a Negative Thought, LIFE 101, How to Heal Depression, Hypericum (St. John’s Wort) & Depression, and Ain’t Nobody’s Business if You Do: The Absurdity of Consensual Crimes in Our Free Country.

"The advertising industry, known for its hyperbole, has taken the "war" side of the War on Drugs—most significantly through its Partnership for a Drug-Free America," observed McWilliams. "I think the publishing industry should, by contrast, take the side of truth, as it often does in exposing the expedient morality of advertisers and the industries they represent (The Jungle, The Silent Spring, Unsafe at Any Speed, The Merchants of Death). I trust Medical Marijuana Press will be the first of many imprints from publishers on establishing a science- and reason-based drug policy in America."

Medical Marijuana Press announces its first list:

A Question of Compassion: An AIDS-Cancer Patient Explores Medical Marijuana. (Hardcover, $19.95)

"I owe my life to modern medical science, and to one ancient herb," says McWilliams in this simple explanation of medical marijuana. With little text and illustrated throughout with full-color photographs, it is designed for the first-time medical marijuana patients, their families, and their caregivers. "When I was first diagnosed with AIDS and cancer," said McWilliams, "This is the book I wish someone would have handed me."

When asked if he thought the book had a limited market, McWilliams replied, "When the opening sentence of the National Society of Neuroscience October 1997 report on medical marijuana begins, ‘New research shows that substances similar to or derived from marijuana, known as cannabinoids, could benefit more than 97 million Americans who experience some form of pain each year," I’d say it had quite a market.

How to Prepare, Purify, and Use Medical Marijuana.
Paperback, 5.95.

This straightforward manual tells how to use a crock pot to make medical marijuana free from bacteria, viruses, molds, and insect droppings, while significantly reducing and pesticide level as well. The process takes less than a day and consumes about ten minutes of human time. (The crock pot does the work.) The finished product, when smoked, does not smell like marijuana at all. While the crock pot’s out, the book shows how to make medical marijuana extracts for cooking or encapsulation. (The capsules can be swallowed or used as suppositories.) Also featured are the best—and worst—ways of inhaling medical marijuana (avoid water pipes), how to roll a joynt (use a $5 machine), and how to smoke medical marijuana safely (the patient is playing with fire, after all).

How to Grow Medical Marijuana.
Paperback, $5.95.

Basic, up-to-date information on marijuana cultivation at home. If you don’t know the terms mother, clone, and Sea of Green, you don’t know the latest about medical marijuana cultivation. Home cultivation not only insures medical marijuana free of pesticides, but it reduces medical marijuana bills by at least 75 percent. You will no longer have to deal with the shifty characters of the drug underworld, but you will have to watch out for the even shiftier characters in narcotics enforcement. Void where prohibited by law.

Topics

"The Big Lie: Medical Marijuana and Our United States Government."
Prior to 1937, medical marijuana was a part of mainstream American medicine. It had been so, under the name cannabis, for almost one hundred years. In 1937, the Congress of the United States was blatantly deceived by the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN), the immediate bureaucratic ancestor of the DEA. Congress was told by the FBN that the American Medical Association favored the 1937 bill banning "the killer weed with its roots in Hell."

In fact, the AMA had strenuously opposed it. "Since the medicinal use of cannabis has not caused and is not causing addiction, the prevention of the use of the drug for medicinal purposes can accomplish no good end whatsoever," the AMA testified before the FBN-controlled subcommittee in 1937. "How far it may serve to deprive the public of the benefits of a drug that on further research may prove to be of substantial value, it is impossible to foresee." Prophetic words, indeed. Who in 1937 could foresee modern cancer treatment and the debilitating nausea it can cause? Who could have foreseen AIDS? Who could have foreseen 100,000 American deaths each year from prescription medications used according to doctor’s instructions, and the desperate need we now have for more benign substitutes?

When the bill came up for a vote before the Depression-weary Congress, the FBN said the AMA had approved it. The bill passed on a voice vote after less than two minutes of debate. The government lied to itself and believed it. That was The Big Lie about medical marijuana. For 61 years, the people of the United States have been lied to by their own government about what could be, for millions of Americans, the best medicine. Using government transcripts covering seven decades—with a special emphasis on the more recent post-Proposition 215 federal anti-medical-marijuana rhetoric—McWilliams reveals in a line-by-line analysis of government documents the self-serving deceptions that keep the war against medical marijuana more viciously fought today than at any point in the past.

"Medical Marijuana and the Treatment of Depression."
While medical marijuana is not a first-line treatment for depression (the herb St. John’s wort, prescription antidepressants, and Cognitive or Interpersonal Therapy should be tried first), many suffers of depression (including McWilliams) have found medical marijuana an excellent adjunct to these treatments. In some intractable cases of depression where medical science cannot seem to help, medical marijuana has provided relief.

McWilliams finds it ironic that a book he co-authored and published—Hypericum (St. John’s Wort) & Depression—about another herb marginally more harmful than medical marijuana became a bestseller and launched a $5 million National Institute of Mental Health study on St John’s wort’s effectiveness, while McWilliams and his meddlings with medical marijuana is the subject of a $3 million DEA-IRS criminal investigation.

"Medical Marijuana and Emotional Loss."
McWilliams, who more than two decades ago originated, co-authored, and published the now-classic How to Survive the Loss of a Love ("One of the ten most recommended books by clinical psychologists to their clients," wrote the New York Times), discusses medical marijuana’s unique physiological properties and its effect on emotional loss.

"DEA: The Covert International Military Organization That Creates Its Own War So It Can Keep On Fighting to Win It."
In 1930, when the decade-old "great experiment" of alcohol Prohibition had clearly failed, forward-thinking Prohibition agents started the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN). As America didn’t have a drug problem to speak of in 1930, a problem had to be invented. "Marihuana" was the scapegoat. As the demonic tales of the "marihuana menace" from the FBN grew, so did the FBN. In 1972, the FBN became the DEA and continued with business as usual (including Iran/Contra) and it continues to this day with its "zero tolerance" of medical marijuana.

"The Same People Who Sold Us Cigarettes Are Selling Us The War on Drugs: The Advertising Industry, The Partnership for a Drug-Free America, and a Dark Day for American Capitalism."
Madison Avenue makes billions selling us tobacco, alcohol, caffeine, and pharmaceutical drugs. Marijuana frightens the advertising industry. It is both a medicine and a recreational high that, if legal, would obviously compete with the far more dangerous drugs the advertising industry sells. Unlike tobacco, alcohol, caffeine, and pharmaceutical drugs, however, marijuana grows readily in any windowbox and obviously needs no advertising.

Marijuana, if legal, would cut deeply into alcohol-tobacco-caffeine-pharmaceutical sales, advertising would fall, and there is no indication that marijuana ads would rise to fill the revenue gaps left by the demise of Joe Camel. To protect its lucrative alcohol-tobacco-caffeine-pharmaceutical accounts, the advertising industry launched in 1987 a multibillion dollar campaign to keep marijuana illegal. Thus far, it has consumed more than $2 billion in public service announcements, the largest public service campaign ever, at the expense of all the other less influential charities vying for precious public service time. (The advertisers have an obvious in with the media—after all, advertising pays the media’s bills.)

It’s a dark day for American capitalism when, in order to "stay on top," the alcohol-tobacco-caffeine-pharmaceutical advertising agencies, whose legal and heavily advertised products kill 750,000 Americans each year, must attack an herbal medicine that has killed no one and could relieve the suffering of millions. Why but the advertising industry—the greatest mind-control experts in the history of the world—could then turn around and make the taxpayers finance the whole thing?

"Deeply Disturbed by Their Stubborn Hearts: What Jesus Would Say About Medical Marijuana."

The religious right has added medical marijuana to the top of its immoral-therefore- it-must-remain-illegal- so-help-us-God list, while the Vatican condemns all marijuana use, even medicinal, as a mortal sin. (It has been, in fact, since 1484 when Pope Innocent VIII added to the Inquisition’s list of burnable offenses possession of marijuana or other "witch herbs.")

(Ed. note:"CORRECTION: In "For the Record" (Feb. 24) NR reported that Pope John Paul II wanted the Italian government to ban tobacco as a hard drug. In fact he was talking about marijuana. So the Pope is right about tobacco, though wrong about pot." National Review Magazine / March 24, 1997 page 6. )

But what do the words of Jesus actually say about useful but "illegal" forms of healing? In healing a blind man, for example, Jesus "spit on the man’s eyes"(Mark 8:22-25), and to a deaf mute Jesus, "spit and touched the man’s tongue"(Mark 7:32–35).

Hardly FDA-approved medical procedures, to be sure. But they worked. Nevertheless, Jesus was executed by the religious-political leaders of his day (the Pharisees and Herodians) for, among other crimes, healing on the Sabbath. ("Whoever does any work on the Sabbath day must be put to death" [Exodus 31:15].) At Jesus’ "trial" by the powerful religious elite, "They brought to the Pharisees the man who had been blind. Now the day on which Jesus had made the mud and opened the man’s eyes was a Sabbath. Some of the Pharisees said, ‘This man [Jesus] is not from God, for he does not keep the Sabbath.’ (John 9:13–14, 16)."

That Jesus healed the blind man didn’t matter; that he healed on the Sabbath did. That medical marijuana eases the suffering of millions of sick people does not matter; that marijuana is "immoral, illegal, and wrong, wrong, wrong" does. (Quote from our first Drug Czar William J. Bennett, a Catholic and honorary fundamentalist Christian.)

Perhaps the most telling example of what Jesus would say about medical marijuana is in this event, told by Luke (6:7-11), Matthew (12:9-14), and this recount from Mark 3:1-6: "Another time he went into the synagogue, and a man with a shriveled hand was there. Some of them were looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, so they watched him closely to see if he would heal him on the Sabbath. Jesus said to the man with the shriveled hand, ‘Stand up in front of everyone.’ Then Jesus asked them, ‘Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?’ But they remained silent. He looked around at them in anger and, deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts, said to the man, ‘Stretch out your hand.’ He stretched it out, and his hand was completely restored. Then the Pharisees went out and began to plot with the Herodians how they might kill Jesus."

Luke, the physician, tells of a similar incident before more moderate Pharisees (14:1-6): "One Sabbath, when Jesus went to eat in the house of a prominent Pharisee, he was being carefully watched. There in front of him was a man suffering from dropsy. Jesus asked the Pharisees and experts in the law, ‘Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath or not?’ But they remained silent. So taking hold of the man, he healed him and sent him away. Then he asked them, ‘If one of you has a son or an ox that falls into a well on the Sabbath day, will you not immediately pull him out?’ And they had nothing to say." One wonders what Pat Robertson will have to say.

More information of these titles and others will be released soon. Medical Marijuana Press is distributed through Prelude Press, Inc.

To interview Peter McWilliams about the Medical Marijuana Press,
please call 213-650-9571 x 125.