McWilliams Ruling
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Re “Judge Denies AIDS Patient’s Request for Marijuana,” March 10: The decision of U.S. District Judge George H. King to refuse to allow Peter McWilliams the medical use of marijuana is unconscionable.
King says he cannot allow, to a possibly dying man, “what amounts to a license to violate federal law.” Yet the judge himself should know two things: 1) Necessity, as in life and death, is a common-law reason to violate many kinds of laws; and 2) the drug laws he is talking about blatantly and egregiously violate the 10th Amendment, not to mention every person’s natural right to use medicine.
A judge who cannot find some reason or pretext to grant the compassionate use of marijuana to McWilliams is therefore a man without conscience or honesty: Not just a bad judge, but a bad man.
KELLEY L. ROSS
Los Angeles
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