I’m not going to criticize Orrin Hatch for helping obtain the pardon and release of Hip Hop producer Dallas Austin from a Dubai jail. Austin (is his middle name Houston?) only had a small amount of cocaine that he wanted to enjoy while celebrating supermodel Naomi Campbell’s birthday. He certainly didn’t deserve to do four years in prison. He might just as well have been granted four years in the White House. That is, if there were true justice in this world. But there is not justice in this world, which is my point.
My best friend and his wife just arrived in Dubai today. I can assure you that they didn’t bring any drugs with them. But if they did, I can also assure you that Orrin Hatch would not have put his neck out to secure their release. I’m not saying Hatch is terrible on the issue:
A spokesman for Mr. Hatch said that the senator was a proponent of rehabilitation for drug offenders, and that he had worked to revise federal sentencing guidelines regarding cocaine, and, through legislation in 2005, had advocated treatment for nonviolent offenders and the easing of restrictions on medication to treat heroin addiction.
I wish more politicians took Hatch’s view of drug abuse and the best way to address it. I’m just saying that there is something wrong with our justice system when the powerful and connected get a pass, and the rest of us get the ‘justice’ system. I have little use for cocaine or anyone stupid enough to use it. But we don’t have an equitable system for punishing the use and distribution of cocaine. And then there is marijuana. Can we decriminalize that already?
