'War on Drugs:' A Foul Tragedy By Garrison Keillor

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'War on Drugs:' A Foul Tragedy

 

By Garrison Keillor, In These Times. Posted December 6, 2005.

 

 

A marijuana grower can get life in prison without parole, while a

murderer might be in for eight years. No rational person can defend this.

 

We Democrats are at our worst when we try to emulate Republicans -- as

we did in signing onto the " war " on drugs that has ruined so many

young lives.

 

The cruelty of the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 is stark indeed, as

are the sentencing guidelines that impose mandatory minimum sentences

for minor drug possession -- guidelines in the 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse

Act that sailed through Congress without benefit of public hearings,

drafted before an election by Democrats afraid to be labeled " soft on

drugs. "

 

As a result, a marijuana grower can land in prison for life without

parole while a murderer might be in for eight years. No rational

person can defend this; it is a Dostoevskian nightmare, and it exists

only because politicians fled in the face of danger.

 

That includes Bill Clinton, under whose administration the prosecution

of Americans for marijuana went up hugely, so that now there are more

folks in prison for marijuana than for violent crimes. More than for

manslaughter or rape. This only makes sense in the fantasy world of

Washington, where perception counts for more than reality. To an old

Democrat, who takes a ground view of politics -- What is the actual

effect of this action on the lives of real people? -- it is a foul

tragedy that makes you feel guilty about enjoying your freedom.

 

If suddenly on a Friday night the red lights flash and the cops yank

your teenage son and his little envelope of marijuana into the legal

meatgrinder and some bullet-headed prosecutor decides to flex his

muscle and charge your teenager -- because he had a .22 rifle in his

upstairs bedroom closet -- with a felony involving the use of a

firearm, which under our brutal sentencing code means he can be put on

ice for 20 years, and the prosecutor goes at him hammer and tong and

convinces a passive jury and your boy's life is sacrificed so this

creep can run for Congress next year -- this is not your cross alone

to bear. If the state cuts off your right hand with a meat cleaver on

my account and I don't object, then it is my cleaver and my

fingerprints on it.

 

I don't dare visit Sandstone Federal Prison here in Minnesota for fear

of what I'd see there: People who chose marijuana, a more benign drug

than alcohol, and got caught in the religious war that we Democrats in

a weak moment signed onto. God help us if we form alliance with such

bullies as would destroy a kid's life for raising cannabis plants.

 

Garrison Keillor is the host and writer of " A Prairie Home Companion, "

now in its 26th year on the air.

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This wobegotton land

Posted by: peridot on Dec 6, 2005 1:34 AM [Report this comment]

 

where the river had changed its course once in a time before the white

men arrived, and had left an island in the old riverbed, elevated, a

mound of the most fecund earth populated with every variety of berry

and bush possible in the honey summers of the Minnesota river valley

and one of those blessed herbs possessed the power to alliviate the

minor miseries of old age and so it was when I was a young boy there

in that place that after the harvest, in the golden autumn of the year

our family or some member would visit the 'island' and harvest ground

cherries and berries and walnuts and a few stalks of the female of

hemp. Jams, jellies, sugared nuts, and a green flour resulted. These

things were part and parcel of a place and a time when freedom had a

distinct meaning. Not a tag line to some marketing bamboozle or the

cleverly crafted slogan of some corporate lackey seeking public trust.

The boozed up brain of Richard Nixon produced the War On Drugs. Now,

nearly 40 years and hundreds of billions of dollars spent on this war

and who has benefitted? Who is to blame? Just as the life of its

citizens have been consumed, freedom itself has been consumed.

 

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