[Mb-civic] 55 years in prison for selling pot

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

Dear Friend:

Twenty-five-year-old Weldon Angelos celebrated Christmas in federal
prison this year ... just like he'll do every year until he's 80.

Last month, Angelos was sentenced to 55 years in prison for selling
marijuana to undercover police officers. As U.S. District Judge Paul
Cassell pointed out at sentencing, that's more time than he would have
received if he had hijacked an airplane (25 years), beaten someone to
death in a fight (13 years), or raped a 10—year-old child (11 years).

In fact, the maximum sentence for all those crimes combined is less
than the federal mandatory minimum sentence for a drug felony
involving a gun. (Angelos was carrying a gun at the time of his
arrest, although he never brandished it or threatened anyone.)

The assistant U.S. attorney prosecuting the case justified putting
Angelos -- a first-time offender and father of two -- behind bars for 55
years by saying that he was a "purveyor of poison" who got what he
deserved. (The "poison" was marijuana, which has never killed anyone.)

Angelos isn't alone in having his life destroyed by the government's
war on marijuana users:

Jonathan Magbie died three months ago while serving a 10-day sentence 
for
marijuana possession in a jail in Washington, D.C. Magbie, a 27-year-old
quadriplegic, used marijuana to treat his chronic pain. He was unable to
breathe on his own, and the jail -- unequipped to meet his medical needs
-- allowed him to die while in custody.

And last year, a 19-year-old Florida college student was brutally
raped by his cellmate while serving the first of four weekends in jail for
a small-scale marijuana offense.

And the year before that, 20-year-old Jose Colon -- just months away
from being the first in his family to obtain a college degree -- was
shot and killed by police in a raid in which eight ounces of marijuana
were seized. Colon wasn't even a suspect. He just happened to be visiting
the house being raided, and he had no drugs or weapons on him.

Every week, we at the Marijuana Policy Project confront extreme
government abuses like these, as the war on marijuana users rages on, with
the government arresting law-abiding citizens, seizing their property,
locking them up for decades, and even killing them.

With the help of our 18,000 dues-paying members, MPP is working to end 
the
persecution and destruction of people like Weldon Angelos, Jonathan
Magbie, and millions of others. You can help us bring sense to our
nation's marijuana policies by making a financial contribution to our work
at http://www.mpp.org/donate1097 today.

Your help is desperately needed. The government is arresting more than
700,000 marijuana users a year -- that's one arrest every 42 seconds --
which is more than the number of arrests for robbery and all violent
crimes combined. (And about 88% of all marijuana arrests are for
possession, not sale or manufacture.)

This holiday season, let's remember the many, many victims of the
government's war on marijuana users -- the cancer patients living in
fear of arrest for using marijuana to quell their nausea and help them
keep food down ... the college students losing their financial aid for
smoking a joint ... the AIDS patients using medical marijuana to ease the
pain of their final months, terrified of losing their homes if caught ...
and the thousands staring at empty cell walls for doing nothing more
harmful than possessing marijuana.

We can and will put an end to this cruel and unjust war. Please visit
http://www.mpp.org/donate1097 to stand with us in the fight. Thank you.

Sincerely,

Rob Kampia
Executive Director
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"In times of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
   ---   George Orwell


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