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Pennsylvania’s latest attempt at recreational legalization has passed the House. Like many nascent compromises, it seems as if everyone is unhappy.
MSOs hate the looming state store model. Activists hate the MSO oligopoly. And consumers want access to every product the internet can imagine and want it now.
While the empowered and privileged stakeholders of the process play their “Game of Thrones” with hundreds of millions in pot sales at stake, I’m marking my third year in federal prison for a first-time, nonviolent, cannabis offense.
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There were already plenty of dispensaries open in Pittsburgh when the FBI and informants pulled the plug on my legacy empire in 2019. The subsequent years of my incarceration from 2022 onward were ones of corporate consolidation in the sphere as large operators used their cash reserves to increase their market share in the state.
There’s still much talk and tumult for cannabis. Profits are down while consumption is up. But it’s all largely moot for me because I am rotting in here.
I am not alone. There are almost 2,000 of us in federal prison for cannabis. Most of us are on sentences that vastly exceed those given by the state due to the mandatory minimum 1994 Crime Bill statute.
With regard to justice, we are an afterthought, an inconvenient rounding error. Too small a number to provoke mass outrage. But every one of us is being fractionally murdered in here. We don’t get these days back. We’ve all had people we love die and never saw them again.
I have a daughter, my only child, whom I have never met. The sole contact I’ve had with her has been on the contraband cellphones that keep me on 24/7 lockdown in the SHU for months on end. My wife was pregnant alone, gave birth alone, and raised her alone because I did something that all these corporations and celebrities are fighting to do more of.
We exist in an inaccessible and unsolvable interstice.
Nothing will free us save a Presidential pardon or an act of Congress, making activists on our behalf largely performative. Politicians either ignore us or beg off engaging with our collective plight.
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State elected officials say it’s a federal matter. Federal officials say it’s not feasible. Biden promised to help us and didn’t. Democrats are largely too timid to be labeled Democrats by Republicans, and Republicans don’t care or think we belong inside.
So the sun rises and another day of fractional murder in 95F with no AC and 12 toilets for 400 men continues. I may be a federal prisoner. But I’m not a federal citizen save in the most amorphous sense.
I’m a child of the Commonwealth. I grew up in Easton and Pittsburgh. I went to Temple University in Philadelphia. I received my law degree from Pitt and my diploma from Taylor Allderdice High School in the historic Jewish community of Squirrel Hill.
Not a single PA elected official at the state or federal level has ever mentioned my name. Frankel (my neighbor), Fetterman, Lee, Shapiro, Gainey, are all mum. We are the people who created the industry. That’s why we are called legacy and not criminals.
But all these machinations for them and nothing for us but more time behind a wall, show what we are worth in their elaborate bargains.
*This op-ed was submitted by a guest contributor. The author is solely responsible for the content.