It Is Past Time To Decriminalize and Legalize Cannabis at the Federal Level & Expunge the Records Of All Who Have Ever Been Convicted Of A Cannabis Related "Crime"

 Harry Kelso is guilty of smoking weed. For which he received a 10 year sentence. A non violent activity that hurts no one got him ten years. Weall know why. 

Yet when a president of the USA, donald j. trump, incites an armed insurection at the Capitol on 01/06/2021 he receives NOTHING. 

We've got one F'ed up justice system in America.

On to the article.

Harry Kelso, of Virginia, spent nearly nine years in prison for marijuana-related offenses. He's pushing for restorative justice for others who were imprisoned for marijuana after the state legalized the drug for recreational use.

ABC NEWS - In 2001, Harry Kelso left his hometown of Roanoke, Virginia, for the big city of Richmond and the promise of an education at Virginia Union University.

“I was gonna go to school and get my degree and get out and find a technology job and have a family. … I just had dreams … [of] just having a normal life,” he told “Nightline.”

But Kelso, like many college students, smoked weed. He says he started selling it on the side while in college to make extra cash.

“It was just so open, like everybody was smoking,” he said. “It never felt illegal or criminal, but in a sense, I did know it was breaking the law.”

A few years later, he returned home one day to find police waiting outside his apartment, which he said had been “taped off like it was a murder scene -- for marijuana.”

Getting busted was scary enough, he said. But when he learned that he’d be receiving a severe sentence, it was absolutely devastating.

“I never thought in history that I would ever get sentenced to 10 years for marijuana,” he said.

At just 25 years old, Kelso began a nearly decade-long sentence for a first-time felony conviction.

Virginia legalized recreational use of cannabis just this year, becoming the first Southern state to legalize recreational cannabis, joining at least 16 others: Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, Oregon, Vermont, Washington, New York and New Mexico.

Virginia’s recreational marijuana legalization jump-started an entirely new industry in the state, leaving people like Kelso wondering what they stand to gain after losing so much.

“I want in,” he said. “I sold not even $100,000 [worth of marijuana] and got 10 years. You’re telling me you can legally sell hundreds of millions [worth]? ... It's kind of tough to swallow.”

The wave of legislation reflects a cultural shift in our nation. Ninety-one percent of Americans say marijuana should be legal for medicinal or recreational use, according to Pew Research Center.

As more states legalize recreational use and public support increases, Congressional Democrats have been working on legislation that could make cannabis legal at a federal level. Currently, marijuana is listed as a schedule 1 substance, where it has been sitting alongside heroin and ecstasy since the Controlled Substances Act of 1970 was passed.

An action that was intended to result in the incarceration of people of color, primarily black, for no crime other than smoking and enjoying a natural substance that many veiw as natures greatest medicinal gift to humankind.

But we've never been a truly rational nation. Not really.

More BELOW the FOLD.