US Willing To Release Russian War Criminal for WNBA Player as People Rot in AMERICAN Prisons for…

By admin MS MMJ News July 31, 2022

This week, the Biden administration made an offer to Russian authorities to bring home Brittney Griner, a WNBA basketball player from Houston facing a trial on drug charges in Russia. As part of the deal, Russia would release Griner and Paul Whelan (accused of espionage in 2018) in exchange for Viktor Bout, a Russian arms trafficker and war criminal, currently imprisoned in the United States. Bout was sentenced in 2012 after he was caught agreeing to sell millions of dollars in weapons to a Colombian terrorist group.

Griner has been held in a Russian prison since February after customs officials found two cannabis vape cartridges in her baggage. A doctor had prescribed the cannabis oil to her for pain and inflammation from career-related injuries.

Griner does not deserve to be in jail, and hopefully she is returned to the United States post haste. That being said, however, the administration’s concern over her detainment — and their willingness to release a war criminal — rings hollow given their track record on marijuana and the thousands of people they currently have locked in cages over marijuana possession.

In spite of the fact that weed is legal in some form in over half the country, the drug-warrior predator class still viciously enforces the war on marijuana, ruining and ending lives from coast to coast in the process. Allen Russell, a 39-year-old man from Mississippi is a recent example of the state ruining lives in their enforcement of marijuana prohibition.

Russell was caught with a little over 1 ounce of marijuana in the state of Mississippi. And, despite the fact that the state just legalized medical marijuana in November of 2020, “possession of between 30 and 250 grams is a felony punishable by a maximum of 3 years imprisonment and/or a maximum fine of $3,000.”

While three years for having a tiny bit of a plant is certainly excessive, what happened to Russell moves beyond excessive into the realm of cruel and unusual. In 2019, Russell was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole because he had a little bit of a plant which happens to be available over the counter in a dozens states.