01/09/2014
Michael Lapihuska is facing a sentence that could be as severe as 10 years in prison, not for r**e, burglary or assault, but for the possession of a single joint’s worth of ma*****na.
I could ask questions like this all day long, and the one thing that they have in common is their indication of the senselessness of the situation.
During the escalation of the war on drugs in the 1990s, the United States Justice Department promoted its actions as an effort to take down the drug lords. However, 80 percent of the increased arrests were for ma*****na possession.
If you are convicted of possession of ma*****na, your chances of serving prison time are four percent greater than those of someone convicted of trafficking ma*****na – 31 percent of ma*****na users are sentenced to jail or prison time; traffickers, 27 percent.
This crazy war is not living up to the billing. We have spent millions upon millions of dollars in South America eradicating coca, but there is more co***ne in America than ever.
We eradicate ma*****na grown in the U.S., which just means more ma*****na coming from Mexico and more money going into the hands of Mexican drug cartels.
Even if ma*****na was every bit the dangerous substance they would have you believe, it still could not do 10 percent of the damage that prohibition has done to America.
Lapihuska already suffers from PTSD, and due to the possession of one joint, this man has been placed under extreme mental stress wondering if he is going to be spending the next 10 years of his life in prison.
It is amazing that our government is willing to trample the constitutional rights of its citizens and inflict such harm on society in order to protect the fiscal interests of the oil, pharmaceutical, chemical and timber companies.
It seems that our politicians are more concerned with campaign contributions and maintaining the status quo than they are to justice or the fair treatment of Americans.
Michael Lapihuska is not a criminal. He is a 37-year-old man with a likable personality who is quite literally willing to give you the shirt off his back. This is not prosecution, it is persecution, and there comes a time when people of good conscience cannot sit idly by and allow their government to persecute their fellow citizens.
If we are not willing to stand up and fight for people like Michael, who will be willing to stand up and fight for us?
