'War on Drugs:' A Foul Tragedy

I love Garrison Keillor, but this is the first time I've seen him even a little bit angry. It's about time.

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.

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 fear the solution to the onerous "war on a weed" will only come when Big Pharma figures out how to mass-market marijuana.