Let me tell you about a friend of mine. For the sake of anonymity we'll say his name is Ed.
I first met Ed when he was fifteen. He and my little sister had started dating. He was the first guy my sister brought home who I couldn't hate, no matter how hard I tried. He was smart, articulate, clever, and very funny. Nearly a straight-A student. All honors and AP classes. He loved computers and he loved math. His goal in life was to design microprocessors. Our family's warm reception to him was probably the main reason my sister dumped him in short order.
Today, at the age of 17, Ed is facing felony drug charges. He will probably be tried as an adult. For all practical purposes, Ed's adult life is over before it even started.
Ed's mother is a divorced flight-attendant. His father ran out on him before he was even born. His mom is routinely gone four days out of the week and has been for most of his life. Both he and his mother have done a lot with very little. Everything I've seen of their house has been nothing but love, and it always seemed very genuine.
The only fault anyone could put on Ed is that he smokes pot. But then so do I and so do my sister, so I can't fault him for that. His marijuana use never interfered with his schooling though, something I can't claim. It was his love of the leaf, combined with his natural gregariousness, that led to his downfall.
As the big 16 approached, Ed wanted a car. His mother couldn't provide him one. He had been working at Taco Bell for a few months and had saved a thousand or so. But he saw the futility of working hard for $6 an hour and wanted better, understandably. Here his friendly, outgoing nature did him in.
Being a potsmoker he had been forced to make connections in the black market. His sources, seeing how popular he was, offered to cut him in to the business. He used his fast-food savings to buy a wholesale quantity of marijuana. Soon he was off and running.
Ed did good business. A few months after he turned 16 he bought a mid-nineties Cadillac for $5000. The rest he told me, he was putting into a savings account for college expenses. I believe him. The only luxury item I ever saw him buy was a Sony PSP.
He was a good entrepreneur. He quickly became a master of spotting counterfeit money, and displayed his collection of fake bills on his bedroom wall. He rejected all drugs harder than marijuana offered to him, and they were offered a lot. He knew if he were to develop a serious addiction he would never get where he wanted to be in life. He didn't want to be a career drug-dealer. He had plenty of scholarships coming to him. He would have made a great Electrical Engineer. This was his stepping-stone to a comfortable life in college and beyond. Now he's looking forward to a hard life in prison.
This Tuesday around 4:00 A.M. a SWAT team raided his house. MP5's were pointed at his and his mother's head. After he was on the ground and cuffed he received a swift kick to the ribs. I saw the bruise, it looked painful. It turns out his suppliers had been busted a few days before, and they had told the police everything they knew. He was just one casualty in a massive operation that my city had undertaken recently. It hasn't done much to actually stop the flow of drugs here, but it has netted the police force millions in money and property seizures. Ed's mother's house will probably be part of their ill-gotten wealth.
Now I'm sure many of you who have read this far are feeling no pity for Ed. You're thinking something along the lines of "he knew the law and he broke it anyway." With all due respect, fuck you. Ed was a damn good kid trying to make the best of the hand he was dealt. He had a mind that was too good for the state colleges here and he knew it. He also knew his mother couldn't help him in any way. He had the social skills and the business savy to make a lot more than he could working at Taco Bell. He had drive and ambition. He could have been a great, productive citizen. Following his dream he could have revolutionized computing as we know it.
Now Ed will soon be another number in the prison system. Instead of enriching society he will be enriching a private prison corporation. Looking for a bright spot in all this, Ed is 6'6 and in good shape. Hopefully he won't end up anally raped and infected with AIDs. Still, even if he makes it through his ordeal physically intact, the Ed I meet in 10 years is going to be carrying severe mental scars. He will have a felony conviction and will be unable to find decent employment. Ed is fucked.
Yet the drug war still carries support on both sides of the aisle. True Libertarians left and right realize the stupidity, but there's this great unwashed middle who sees no problem with what happened to Ed. Many here on Daily Kos are part of that middle. I'm asking you to rethink your position. Have some goddamn sympathy for your fellow man. Have some sympathy for Ed. There's lots of us out there who refuse to follow laws we feel are unjust. Our only hope is to convince you undecideds about that injustice. This is my attempt at conversion.