Originally on the Huffington Post, Posted March 18, 2008 | 07:51 PM (EST)

I want to share with you a story about two so-called drug dealers, one, a friend of presidential candidate and former New York City Mayor Rudolph Guiliani, the other, yours truly.

Mr. Thomas Ravenel, Guiliani's South Carolina Campaign Chairman, was indicted last year and recently pled to federal charges of possessing cocaine with intent to distribute. He received a sentence of ten months in prison.

I am a formerly incarcerated person now working for the Drug Policy Alliance; prior to my incarceration I was an administrative assistant at the University of California, in Davis. I was sentenced to ten years in prison -- more than 10 times the penalty received by Mr. Ravenel. Despite this discrepancy, our "criminal" conduct is virtually the same.

I went to prison on April 6, 2000, for conspiracy to distribute LSD. While the government has its own version of what happened, essentially my role in the offense was to have supplied a good friend of mine with a significant amount of LSD -- enough for me to reasonably think he was either throwing major parties, or was a small-time dealer.

However -- and this is crucial -- the aggregation of amounts under conspiracy charges means that the total amount of LSD I had arranged for him to get over a two-and-a-half year period was treated as one lump sum, which turned a relatively minor case into a major one and garnered me a ten year sentence. I don't begrudge my sentence too much, it could have been a lot worse: the prosecutor argued for 30-to-life because I was unwilling to cooperate with the authorities, i.e. "snitch."

It didn't help that I wasn't a "drug dealer" in the common understanding of the oft-used term, which invokes shady dealings by questionable, often violent characters. Instead, I was that guy you knew back in college who had a knack for "finding" things, legal or not. Unfortunately, in our flashy culture, the "drug dealers" that I could be categorized with are ignored in the media and in public discourse on drug policy because, as an archetype, we're relatively boring. It's a damn shame, because even though we're not glamorous, we happen to be the majority of "drug dealers" who are serving out lengthy sentences behind bars.

The majority of drug dealers prosecuted in federal courts are similar to Mr. Ravenel in terms of drug-associated actions. What makes Mr. Ravenel decidedly different than the majority of federally prosecuted drug dealers, however the following: he has strong ties to former Mayor Guiliani; is a millionaire developer; held office as state treasurer for South Carolina; and received received only ten months for possession with intent to distribute cocaine, despite admitting to cocaine possession and use for more than 25 years.

I imagine Mr. Ravenel was distributing cocaine to his friends for a significant portion of that time, much like I was distributing LSD to my friends. I also imagine that, for that same portion of time, he was rich while yours truly was (and remains) poor.

That's not the only place we part company though. My prosecutor argued for the stiffest sentence possible, despite skepticism from my judge about the necessity of a long prison sentence. In Mr. Ravenel's case, the prosecutor argued for a low-end sentence, despite skepticism from the judge. What a difference having money, connections and fame makes with the prosecution of drug cases! In most cases with "drug dealers" like myself, prosecutors argue for the stiffest sentences possible, to "encourage" cooperation with the authorities.

In the final analysis, Mr. Ravenel is clearly not being treated equally with the rest of society as concerns drug law violations. The aggregation of drug amounts that he possessed and distributed to his friends over the course of almost three decades would clearly qualify him for a mandatory minimum of ten years. Odds are, if he was black and/or poor, he would get at least that amount of time. But more than likely prosecutors would allege one of his "co-conspirators" (a.k.a. his friend) cooked the coke into crack. Then Mr. Ravenel, the poor minority with a federal defender or pro bono lawyer, would be looking at a 30-to-life sentence. Any attempt to reduce his sentence would be decried as either being a travesty against justice or returning an "offender" to our communities to further victimize the public.

This cry was given by Acting Attorney General Mukasey recently at a House hearing on reducing the 100-to-1 disparity of sentences for crack offenders, who have been grossly over-punished for a particular form of cocaine, a practice that was implemented in a racist fashion (a majority of crack dealers and users are white, but a majority of crack cocaine cases are brought against blacks). Where is Mukasey's shrill cry of danger to the community in Ravenel's case?

Once again, we can remember these wise words: drugs don't discriminate, but our drug laws do. If only I had been a well connected millionaire... but then I wouldn't be able to share this personal experience. This experience demonstrates the consequences of drug prohibition: there are hundreds of thousands of people behind bars who have acted similarly to Mr. Ravenel, except they are poor, members of a minority group, most likely aren't friends with Rudy Guiliani, and as a result are in prison for a whole lot longer.