The Damage Done By My Arrest For Pot: New At Reason

A quarter of a century after his arrest for selling a small quantity of marijuana to a few college kids, Zoltan Istvan remains resentful.

Now that the country is on its glacial way to likely legalizing marijuana and taxing the sale of it like it does beer, where is the official apology, to me and all those others? For many of us, an apology—and the government’s inevitable habeas corpus when they likely make pot legal across the land—won’t be enough.

Some of us also want compensation for the financial damage forced upon us—for the literal theft of our property. Maybe that means a class action lawsuit insisting on government reparation for all damage caused, maybe in the form of tax credits or proceeds from the sale of unused Federal land, so as not to abuse the American taxpayer further over the drug war. It’s safe to say—given the damage caused and the lives affected—such a suit would likely be in the billions of dollars.

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