My latest from TCS, on medical marijuana and the killing of Peter McWilliams:

As the Supreme Court considers the constitutionality of state medical-marijuana laws, Americans might want to pause to remember a man named Peter McWilliams. McWilliams was killed by the federal government on June 14, 2000.

No federal agent put a gun to McWilliams’ head or beat him up or threw him into the line of fire, but he died at the government’s hands, nonetheless, as sure as if he had been locked in a cell and denied food and water.

McWilliams, a Californian, a computer genius and a poet, had been suffering from AIDS and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma since 1996. And under California’s Proposition 215, which passed in 1996 and legalized marijuana for medical purposes in the state, he used pot to suppress nausea and keep down his food and medication.

In what many consider to have been a politically motivated prosecution — McWilliams was a popular author and medical-marijuana activist whose book, “Ain’t Nobody’s Business If You Do,” argued fervently against the criminalization of consensual acts — McWilliams’ home was raided by federal agents in 1997, and he was charged as a drug kingpin with conspiracy to sell marijuana.

A federal judge ruled that McWilliams could not rest his defense on his illness or on Proposition 215, which made his actions legal in his state, because federal drug laws superseded California’s. McWilliams pled guilty to avoid a 10-year mandatory-minimum prison sentence.

While out on bail and awaiting sentencing, prohibited from using medical marijuana, McWilliams died. He was found dead in his bathroom in Los Angeles at age 50. He choked to death on his own vomit — unable to keep down his medication.

Something to remember as the Supreme Court abandons federalism.