Drug possession equals sentence to a lifetime of poverty

I was always told America is the land of opportunity, second chances, and freedom. The political elite love to pay lip service to our exceptionalism and that we are the most free country yet the United States imprisons more of its citizens then any country ever in the history of the world. The justice system was supposed to be the same for everybody yet anyone who knows anything about it knows there is two different justice systems, one for the rich and one for the poor. It is designed to protect the rich from the poor and generate profits, something they do very well. Murders go unsolved yet if you drink and drive, you will be caught eventually. There is no money in murder but a lot of money in DUI’s and other petty crimes.

I was going through a terrible period in my life in 2007-2008. I started doing drugs to make me feel better and have a good time. I ended up being arrested two times within three months for possession of drugs. My lawyer said I could have beat the second charge because I was only a passenger and had nothing on me but since I am poor I would have to sit in jail for 6 month to a year while it went to trial. In June of 2008 I was sentenced to 90 days in jail, 3 years reporting probation, and several thousand dollars in fines. This June will be the seven year anniversary of what has become a life sentence of poverty and misery. I was an EMT at the time and had just finished college for paramedic when I was convicted of a drug crime, which rendered all that time useless since one cannot work in the medical field with a drug crime. My grandfather and mother were both sick so I spent my time taking care of them. I spent the rest of the time teaching myself computer programming. I interviewed at IBM and built eleven applications for Microsoft’s Windows Phone. Things seemed to be looking up until I tried to get a full time job. I was hired four times in 2013 as a computer programmer with a nice hourly wage and insurance, something I haven’t had in 10 years. I never actually got to work at any of them because when they received my background check they all decided they could no longer move forward. I understand one should not break the law but should one be locked out of the workforce for life because of a drug possession years ago? It not only hurts my family but my son and me. The company loses because they don’t get to hire the best man for the job. My city, state, even federal government loses out on the taxes and money I would have spent at local businesses.  We live in a cruel time and I know people don’t care anymore but locking me out of the workforce for a victimless crime hurts a lot more than just me. I want to work pay for my son, bills, and way in life yet my prime working years have been and are being spent idle, benefiting nobody. Background checks and drug testing has become big business so corporations were urged to use them and over 95% of them do. I understand they don’t want violent criminals or thieves but I have never stole or harmed another person. I am a nice, smart, respectful person who made a poor choice over six years ago who has been reduced to a beggar living off the alms of family. What is the point of all this knowledge if I am unable to use it? I have been clean for over six years now and all I am asking for is to be able to work so I can pay for me and my family is that too much to ask? What am I supposed to do the rest of my life? Sit idly by while life passes me by. 

If you are convicted of a felony drug charge, kill yourself.

Unless of course you are rich or have a rich family that will help you. It has been almost 7 years since I was convicted of drug possession and do not let them bullshit you, they should have just executed me.

People tell you just quit drugs and everything will get better, you can change your life; it does not get better and you are now locked out of the workforce. No matter how much you learn, study, and change your life, in the end it is for naught. Being convicted of a drug felony ruined my paramedic career so I taught myself computer programming. I have interviewed at Spartan stadium for IBM, built 11 applications for Microsoft as an independent developer, which has my phone ringing off the hook with jobs I will never get. I was hired three times this year at positions that all paid more than twenty dollars an hour plus benefits yet every time I received the email – “Unfortunately due to your background we are unable to move further. Thank you and good luck in your job search”. It doesn't matter that I haven’t had so much as a parking ticket since then, once you are labeled a “felon” you are finished. I am unemployable for possessing a drug the last two presidents have done, cocaine. I tried it again five years ago and did not like it and don’t see why I even did it but it does not matter I have been labeled a felon and therefore I am unemployable. You are not only unemployable but you do not qualify for anything anymore- food stamps or any other welfare benefit is cut off. You can’t even get college loans anymore. You are more discriminated against than a rapist or murderers, at least they get food benefits and qualify for federal student loans.

 If not for my family, I would be living on the streets since NOBODY is willing to give me a chance once my background comes back. I have never hurt, stole, robbed, or even caused another person any pain yet I am locked out of the workforce. I have woke up every day for the last month and wondered what is the point of living anymore?

Here is a question for all those involved with the criminal “justice” system;

What incentive does one have to stay off drugs and not commit another “crime”? If one is refused work, all safety nets are cut and one is barred from any chance of becoming a productive member of society, besides prison what incentive does one have to change. The criminal justice system not only crushes the drug users chances of making a living they also harm everyone from the users family to the city and state they live in by loss of taxes, adding to the able bodied but unemployed numbers, and so on. Instead of admitting capitalism is not working they give people who make a personal choice labels such as “felon” so they can blame victims instead of a broken and corrupt system. I owe child support and am threatened with jail time, that and jail time for fines from receiving the drug possession yet because I have a felony I am barred from employment so I am unable to pay of any of it. It does not even make sense.

 A person who does drugs usually messes up their life enough only to have the state come in and make it infinitely worse. Companies that refuse to employ people convicted of victim-less crimes should be ashamed of themselves. Most people with felony drug crimes blame themselves and don’t say anything just let the state walk all over them. I am done with that way of thinking. 7 years ago, I took my money and bought a small amount of drugs for me to use. Get over it! I do not use now and don’t plan on it again so stop refusing me a way to make a living. Take your fucking boot off my neck and let me make a living, support my child, and pay taxes to my state. I live in Michigan, which could defiantly use the money. Tens of billions is lost each year by states if not more because they label people felons for victim-less crimes. When Obama did cocaine it was youthful indiscretion when I do it, I am sentenced to a life of poverty and misery.

I know I sound bitter but if you spent all the time and energy, I have learning and studying only to be cast out of society, you would be too. We have a two tiered justice system one for the poor and one for the rich. I possess a small amount of cocaine and am barred from employment for life while a rich kid gets probation for getting blind drunk then gets in his daddy’s f-350 and kills four people plus paralyzes his friend. This is the country we live in.

Another depressing year

I truly hope our situation gets better. A question will be how did you make it through or hide out during the first two decades of the two thousands. Congress has a six percent approval rating; you could shed genital warts in a kinder light. Maybe it is just my geographical location; maybe things are different around the country. I know the situation is not better in Las Vegas, so I am sure it is like this everywhere. Are you sick of it? The greed, the selfishness, the “I got mine close the door” attitude, it just makes you want to close your door (if you have one) and pretend you’re in a different time or place. That somehow the world really is not like this, people cannot be this callous.  Maybe I’m naïve but I think people are better than the sum of their representation and right about now it would take a revolution to change things. The wealth grabbers have been at this since 1970, pushing the taxes on the working classes while lowering or eliminating it altogether for them and their corporations. They socialize the risk and privatize the gains. The wealthy want to cut existing safety nets, take peoples pensions yet get billions in substitutes. They say they hate government only they do not. They love government when it is protecting them from the “great beast”, the “useless eaters” or enforcing their patent laws and forcibly removing protesters from their environmentally destructive “work” sites. Most days I do not want to get out of bed anymore, the world has become too cold and cruel. People don’t care about people anymore. I still wake up with the hope, the hope that one day people will come together to stop this before we reach a full on totalitarian police state. A day everybody walks out of their jobs and says, we are done until things change. It is just a fantasy but that’s all I have left anymore.

The Affordable Care Act

In this world of double speak and propaganda the ACA is being called a government program, socialized medicine when in reality it is a windfall of profits for private corporations that are being enforced by the United States government. It is going to crush the poor with payments they cannot afford and insurance too expensive to use. Look 60% may be better than nothing but the one to six hundred a month is going to put them in the hole while having to pay 20-40 percent is going to keep them out of the doctors and hospitals. So while the news parrot their talking points about socialized medicine, the private insurance industry will be raking in huge profits. While the insurance companies swim in the tears of the poor their mouthpieces in Washington have the country fighting over, big government, socialism and other claptrap, once again leaving the poor even poorer, sick, and helpless.

It is well know to those who have ever spend any time in jail or prison that the bars and razor wire are not there to keep prisoners in but everyone else out. As a former medic, I should have brought this up years ago but I figured what was the point, nobody will care. Even if they don't at least I told what I witnessed as it still goes on today. In Macomb County Jail, which is located in Michigan there is a lot of corruption and lies which I suspect go on all over the state and country. Phone cards anyone?

First, lets get it out of the way, what was a medic doing time in jail for? Drugs is the simple answer, poverty, lies,  and not having my prescription medicine in the bottle is the short answer.

My time was completed over six years ago but the violation of the doctors and nurses Hippocratic  oath is still being ignored today. Maybe they are good people but it is said "The Only Thing Necessary for the Triumph of Evil is that Good Men Do Nothing". This is what happens in Macomb county jail and all over the country.

You show up in booking and depending on how many people have been brought in, you will be there around 12-36 hours. This is usually after the 24-36 hours you just spent at a local police station cramped in a cell alone or as in Warren dumped in with 12 to 30 people. That day we were leaving as the food cart pulled up with the see through ham "sandwich's". The guard said " we have to go let them eat at county". It had been thirty some hours since I'd eaten and would now be another 17. At the time I was 6'1 149lbs and hadn't ate days prior to coming to this refuse for the poor, I was starving.

Once at county, it is mostly waiting and if it is summer is really hot, if winter extremely cold. I could go on about the deplorable conditions, lacking of all empathy and justice especially since most are there for non violent drug and traffic charges. Driving on a suspending, possession of weed, and probation violation fill the block.  If you have an opiate addiction you are sent to the "medical" section that houses inmates with diabetes, heart problems, and other life threatening illnesses.  This is where the oath is broken everyday with flat out lies.

When an inmate has a heart problem the nurse will write down he needs to be on a heart monitor as it should be. Around noon the guard walked around the bars and called out our names then would ask "Smith" how's the heart monitor? The inmate looking down and around at only himself and the issued clothing would say just fine. And so it goes on and on, people with life threatening illnesses are documented to be on heart monitors and other medical equipment only to not have any. I wonder if they even have a heart monitor I doubt they do. Even in the medical section with one stressed out nurse on full time duty there is no such thing. There is suppose to be a nurse watching the inmates but there's not. She is always on medication runs, giving "medicine" like aspirin for people with severe pain.

No heart monitors for people with severe heart problems and aspirin when in a hospital they'd be on a morphine drip. You can dismiss this and say these criminals with heinous crimes such as driving without a license and possession of marijuana don't deserve medical and that's your choice but when they document inmates with life threatening illnesses as being on machines and they are not it is them who should be on the other side of the bars.