In 2025, cannabis is everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Everywhere in the sense that you can buy it legally in glittery storefronts, order it for delivery like pizza, see it advertised on billboards, hear politicians brag about the tax revenue, and watch corporate executives talk about “innovation” with the same straight face Big Tobacco used to sell “healthier cigarettes.” Nowhere in the sense that the country still refuses to tell the truth about what cannabis prohibition actually was—and who it was designed to punish.
Because while the legal market keeps expanding, Parker Coleman is still sitting in federal prison serving a 60-year sentence for a cannabis case.
Sixty years.
Think about that number for more than a second. Not a five-year bid. Not a decade. Not even one of those obscene twenty-something sentences we’ve come to accept as normal in drug cases. Sixty years means “die in here.” It means your life ends behind concrete. It means a judge and a prosecutor decided your existence was worth less than the political theater of a drug war that even the government now pretends is outdated.
And let’s be clear right out of the gate: in 2025, that kind of sentence for cannabis isn’t just unfair. It’s a national embarrassment. It is a moral gut-punch. It is a flashing red siren that proves legalization has moved faster than justice, and that the country still hasn’t dealt with the human wreckage prohibition left behind.
Parker’s case is not a dusty relic from a distant era. It is not some fringe anomaly. It is a living, breathing example of how America can legalize a plant, monetize its culture, and still keep the people it caged for that plant locked away like yesterday’s garbage. His story sits …
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Author: Bill Levers / High Times
