In case Montel Williams wasn't already sufficiently pissed off about the government's war on his medicine, yesterday's incident is sure to push him over the edge.

TV celebrity Montel Williams was cited at Mitchell International Airport on Tuesday for carrying a pipe commonly used to smoke marijuana, the Milwaukee County sheriff's office reported.

Williams, 54, was issued the citation for possession of drug paraphernalia after being caught with the pipe by Transportation Security Administration agents while going through a security checkpoint, a news release from the sheriff's office says.
…
Williams, who was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1999, has advocated for the legalization of marijuana for medical use and has said he uses the drug to ease the effects of his condition. [Milwaukee Journal Sentinel]

Having twice had the opportunity to see Montel discuss his personal experience with medical cannabis and vehement disgust with the drug war's continued assault on seriously ill patients like himself, I would strongly urge drug warriors everywhere to leave him the hell alone. He is honestly one of the loudest and most passionate speakers I've ever seen on this topic. This guy built a career on manufacturing melodrama, so you can imagine how intense he gets when he's in pain and the government continues to prohibit the medicine he needs.

The story isn't likely to make major headlines, given that his medical marijuana use was already widely known, but there's a lesson here that I hope won't be entirely ignored. Montel Williams, despite his celebrity status, wasn't immune to the routine and government-approved harassment that medical marijuana patients continue to endure all around the country. What happened to Montel yesterday happens everyday to sick people in America, and very few of them possess the name-recognition to ensure fair treatment or the resources to rebound from the potentially severe legal consequences of a drug conviction.

While much progress has been made, the war on medical marijuana is far from over, and its worst victims are inevitably those whose medical needs are the greatest. If laws protecting medical patients sometimes become a loophole for recreational users, that concerns me far less than the very real and repeatedly-demonstrated reality that aggressive marijuana enforcement continuously results in the vicious persecution of those who are truly sick. These people deserve compassion and respect instead of handcuffs and a criminal record.

The first step is for President Obama to move beyond saying that the war on medical marijuana is a "poor use of resources" and instead admit that harassing seriously ill patients and their providers is just plain wrong.