inkbluesky

In my beginning is my end. In succession
Houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended,
Are removed, destroyed, restored, or in their place
Is an open field, or a factory, or a by-pass.
Old stone to new building, old timber to new fires,
Old fires to ashes, and ashes to the earth
Which is already flesh, fur and faeces,
Bone of man and beast, cornstalk and leaf.
Houses live and die: there is a time for building
And a time for living and for generation
And a time for the wind to break the loosened pane
And to shake the wainscot where the field-mouse trots
And to shake the tattered arras woven with a silent motto.

from EAST COKER (No. 2 of ‘Four Quartets’) by T.S. Eliot

blue smoke wall 

Forgotten man – Steve Tucker served a 10-year prison sentence for selling light bulbs. Is America’s drug war worth it? 

A year has passed since Steve Tucker made his unheralded return to Atlanta.

His one-bedroom flat, tucked into a sprawling Sandy Springs apartment complex, is furnished sparsely: a recliner, TV, computer and a small, picnic-style table that serves as both dining hutch and desk. The stark white static of the walls is interrupted only by three small, web-like dream catchers tacked to the Sheetrock.

It’s the sort of Spartan minimalism one might expect of someone who, until recently, had to content himself with staring at bare cinderblock.

“Watch out, you’re talking to a notorious ex-con.” Wrapped in a sharp Middle Georgia twang, Tucker’s voice betrays a suppressed smile. The slight, balding, 50-year-old Atlantan is hardly an intimidating figure.

But he’s only half-kidding. Nearly a decade ago, he was sent to prison as a result of a once-infamous federal drug case that sparked national outrage for its rough interpretation of justice.

In the spring of 1994, the Tucker family received lengthy prison sentences — 10 years for Steve, 16 years for his older brother Gary, and 10 years for his brother’s wife, Joanne — without possibility of parole, for the curiously worded federal crime of “conspiracy to manufacture marijuana.”

Yet federal prosecutors never charged them with buying, selling, growing, transporting, smoking or even possessing marijuana. An 18-month DEA investigation had failed to turn up direct evidence connecting the Tuckers to even a single joint.

Instead, they were locked away for selling the lamps, fertilizer and gardening hardware from the small hydroponic supply shop Gary operated on Buford Highway that enabled their customers to grow pot.

In the mid-’90s, the Tucker case became a cause celebre among libertarian activists and other advocates of marijuana legalization. It served as an oft-cited, cautionary example of the runaway powers of the federal government and the worst excesses of the War on Drugs.

There have been several large marijuana busts in the last two days from Florida to Colorado. All reported breathlessly by the librul media. As though society had been saved from the most dreadful threat. Each year these people spend in prison ( large sellers do generally go to prison) will cost taxpayers about 20 thousand dollars a year. Tucker’s story is especially tragic. Life is incredibly short, way too short to spend any of it in prison for selling supplies that god forbid anyone might use to grow cannabis or begonias.