WASHINGTON, DC --- Peter McWilliams, the #1 bestselling author and medical marijuana activist, was found dead in the bathroom of his Los Angeles home on June 14. According to sources, he had choked on his vomit.

McWilliams, 50, had suffered from AIDS and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma since 1996, and had used medical marijuana to suppress the nausea that was a common side-effect to the potent medications needed to keep him alive. The marijuana was completely legal, thanks to California's Proposition 215, which passed in 1996 and legalized the use of marijuana for treatment of illness. However, in late 1997, McWilliams was arrested by federal drug agents.

While out on bail, McWilliams was prohibited from using medical marijuana -- and being denied access to the drug's anti-nausea properties almost certainly caused his death, said Steve Dasbach, national director of the Libertarian Party.

"Peter McWilliams would not be dead today if not for the heartless, lethal War on Drugs," said Dasbach. "The federal government killed Peter McWilliams by denying him the medical marijuana he needed to stay alive as surely as if its drug warriors had put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger.

Ironically, on June 9, McWilliams appeared on the "Give Me A Break!" segment of ABC Television's 20/20, where host John Stossel noted, "[McWilliams] is out of prison on the condition that he not smoke marijuana, but it was the marijuana that kept him from vomiting up his medication. I can understand that the federal drug police don't agree with what some states have decided to do about medical marijuana, but does that give them the right to just end run those laws and lock people up? Give me a break! [It] seems this War on Drugs often does more harm than the drugs themselves."

Five days later, McWilliams was dead.

"There's a certain sad irony that Hawaii legalized medicinal marijuana on the same day that one of the movement's most prominent advocates, Peter McWilliams, died because he was denied access to his own medicinal marijuana -- in a state in which it was legal." -- Rick Sincere