I'm a Very Lucky Guy

I got out! I was sentenced to sixty-four years for non-violent marijuana offenses. High Time magazine gave me the dubious title of “the longest serving non-violent marijuana offender in America”. It won't be mine for long. Many sentenced after me will soon be able to claim my title. They are serving LIFE WITHOUT PAROLE and will never get to spend another minute as a free man.

Here are a few reasons I'm one hell of a lucky guy. I was a pot smuggler in the late 1970's. At the time, no one received a life sentence for marijuana. That changed in the early 80's as Reagan stepped up this insane failure of a drug war. At the time I was thirty-six and thought 64 years, most of it non-parolable, was in effect a life sentence. I survived thirty years in some of America's toughest prisons, including the Super-Max where Gotti died. I now live in a senior community in sunny Florida. I am married to my childhood love. I have a wonderful son, two beautiful granddaughters and more good friends than I probably deserve. My book, Black Tuna Diaries(www.blacktunadiaries.com ) is doing well and will soon be featured in a documentary by rakontur films (The U and Cocaine Cowboys). I go fishing now and then when I'm not speaking at Universities, doing book signings, or working with NORML and other organizations for the legalization of medical marijuana.

Billy Dekle and a lot of older marijuana offenders won't be so lucky. They were convicted in the 1980's or early 90's. They are serving life without parole or sentences so long, they will never be released. Almost all, are in their 60's or 70's. Like me, most are first time non-violent offenders. Like me, they want nothing more than to go home and quietly live out their remaining years with friends and family. But unless things change, they won't make it.

Here is what they have to look forward to: Surviving day to day in an environment so dangerous that a slip of the tongue often ends in death. Since the elimination of parole, federal prisons are populated mainly by young, uneducated, aggressive inmates serving absurdly long sentences. They have little hope and nothing to lose. Violence has become endemic in a system that has little or no reward for good behavior. Prison gangs find older non-violent inmates easy prey.

Inadequate medical care. It costs the taxpayers billions to provide even minimal health care for older inmates. Yet these are the people least likely to commit a crime after release. An older marijuana offender serving a long sentence is likely to die in prison for lack of medical care. Here is a first hand look into their world. After being diagnosed with skin cancer on my chest, face and back, it was over a year before a visiting surgeon had me rushed to a nearby hospital to remove the tumors. By that time they had grown from the size of a pinhead to the size of a quarter. Why so long? Budget! Priorities!

In most federal prisons it takes a year or more to see a dentist, unless it's deemed an emergency. I saw a healthy man in his late 30's die when an oral infection spread to his heart. The most egregious incident I witnessed was a young doctor serving only a year for taxes, who died of a heart attack when the P.A on night duty refused to bring him his heart medication. That story is in my book. A few years before my release I was diagnosed with a thyroid deficiency. It was almost a year before an MRI was performed to confirm the diagnosis and I was finally put on medication. To be fair, federal prisons offer a yearly check-up to inmates over fifty. Unfortunately, there is often a long gap between check-up and treatment. Treatment is often limited to the outdated or ineffective medications on hand. I wounder how many of the people reading this have a friend or relative serving prison time for marijuana and what they think are the chances that they will emerge alive and whole. Its shocking to see the long lines of diabetic inmates, most of whom developed the disease as a result of prison diet, waiting for their insulin, often for hours. Of course this leads to accelerated degeneration and unnecessary loss of limbs.

An extremely unhealthy diet. It becomes an obsession, trying find enough decent food to maintain good health. Even under the best of circumstances, its no longer possible. When I entered prison in 1979, the budget to feed an inmate for three meals a day was $2.62. When I left prison in 2008 it had shrunk to $2.25. Not long ago while doing a book signing at the Miami Book Fair, a recently released inmate told me the budget was cut to $2.15. This has to pay, not only for food, it has to cover repairs and replacements for kitchen equipment, civilian salaries, and eating utensils. Most of my time in prison was spent working in the kitchens. I know whereof I speak. Its no surprise that prison diets are primarily starch. Bread (now bought stale from supermarket returns), potatoes, rice, pasta, and anything made mostly of flour or cornmeal. It used be 4 ounces of protein(meat, fish, chicken) per meal. Now its 2½ ounces for lunch or dinner and most of that is usually breading over sewer trout or mystery meat. Believe me, I've seen the packages. There's stuff in there you wouldn't feed to your worst enemy. To make sure every inmate gets enough bad cholesterol, most foods are deep fried. In theory there is supposed to be a “baked” alternative, but if you request it, your branded a trouble maker and will pay a price. Until perhaps 10 years ago, an inmate who wanted to keep his health could find enough fresh vegetables on the salad bar to maintain. Salad bars are gone with the wind or limited to chopped lettuce with a few scraps of carrot or purple cabbage for color. Broccoli, cauliflower, celery, tomatoes, green beans, greens, seen rarely. Fruit? Not much, not often, even though again “in theory”, its available as a substitute for sweet starchy deserts. Its not a great idea to call attention to yourself by frequently requesting substitutes. If you do, you are likely to be handed an old storage apple with more brown spots than a pinto pony. In the distant past, if you had plenty of money you could buy a decent variety of fruit in the prison commissary. No more. They don't want it in the living areas because it looks the same as fruit stolen from the prison kitchen. Only now its difficult to find any fruit in the prison kitchen to steal. Fresh local vegetables, forget about it. Maybe on Thanksgiving or Christmas! You don't have to be an economist to figure out, that since Bush decimated the prison food budget, the cost of inmate medical care has skyrocketed. Especially for older inmates, many of whom require a special or restricted diet. For example! Twenty years ago, when I was working in the kitchen at FCI Butner, a man in his 70's, with a serious medical condition and on a very restricted diet, was told by the doctor it was imperative he eat at least one tomato every day. His friends got together and paid me $10.00 a month to see that he got two or three tomatoes each day. No problem! I was in charge of preparing the salad bar. I had one case of tomatoes for the salad bar per day. No one objected to me swiping two for a sick old man. Today...he would die for lack of a simple food that the Bureau of Prisons can no longer afford to buy. Now, the Bureau will say that they provide special diets for those who require them. And it's true. Sort of! Those diet trays usually contain so little edible food that the starving sick geezer ends up eating a piece of deep fried breaded sewer trout or a hunk of fried breaded mystery meat, just to stave off the terrible never ending hunger pangs. The results, a sick geezer who now needs expensive medications and has little or no chance of surviving a long sentence. Most of those geezers would pose no threat to society if released. It's even worse when the geezer is serving forever for marijuana, a harmless substance, and an effective medication that is now legal in many states. How would you feel if that old pot smuggler was your Uncle Billy?

Geezer in the hole! “The Hole”! Segregation!...The Federal Bureau of Prisons thinks it sounds better if they call it the SHU (Special Housing Unit). Take my word for it, it ain't special in any way you'd like to experience. During my almost 30 years in 11 different federal prisons, about 3 ½ years were spent in segregation. They got it right in the old movies, “the hole”. Now you might ask, why would a nice non-violent old dude wind up in the hole? Lots of reason! Someone “drops a note” saying the old dude's life is in danger. Result many months in the hole. He gets in a fight. Doesn't matter if it's self-defense. Into the hole! Uncle Billy gets caught coming out of the chow hall with an apple or a cookie in his pocket. The hole! The old pot smuggler has been forced to work in the prison factory because he owes a fine. A tool disappears from his work area. Everyone who works in that area is tossed in the hole. And so on and so on. Now what happens is: he has to eat whatever shows up on the meager tray that comes through the slot, or starve. Mostly he eats all the starchy crap because he's been flat on his back all day and night, and he's bored to death. Meals are the only break he looks forward to. Each time he leaves his cell his hands are cuffed behind his back. This is especially painful for an older inmate. He has to be cuffed while he crouches backwards with his hands pushed out through the lower food slot. This usually means Uncle Billy will forgo his three weekly showers and exercise periods. Its no big deal when your young and supple, but for a geezer its a different story. The only way I can express it is, if you are over fifty, spend 90 days in the hole and you come out two years older. Fatter, slower, more depressed, and less likely to recover physically or mentally.

Its time for all the Uncle Billys to go home. You can go to www.pardonbilly.com and sign the petition for Billy Deckle. A long shot but well worth the small effort. You can support the bill in Congress ____________sponsored by Barney Frank that will reduce marijuana to a Schedule II substance. It would substantially reduce the penalty for pot offenses, possibly freeing those who have spent decades in prison and preventing anyone else from suffering the fate of Uncle, me, and a lot of .other not so bad old geezers. There are several outstanding organizations working for this goal that deserve your support. NORML (National Organization for Marijuana Law Reform) has lead the fight for many years with much success. Another group that's garnered respect and attention from legislators is LEAP (Law Enforcement Against Prohibition), a large group of former cops, police chiefs, DEA agents and former administrators who are fighting for legalization. These and other organizations with the same goals need and deserve your support. Join me and help bring a geezer home because I'm a lucky guy.

Got a question? Post it here or send it to me at tunaville@yahoo.com . That's it for now from Tunaville where its always 420 and everyone is reading High Times and the new High Times Medical Marijuana.

Copyright 2009 Robert Elliot Platshorn www.blacktunadiaries.com