The cannabis community has been buzzing ever since it was announced that Jeff Mizanskey, the man who got famous because of his life sentence for selling prison, was to be released from prison last year. Now, Mizanskey is back in the media’s eye ever since he made it public that he plans to work on reforming cannabis law.
Mizanskey spent 20 years in prison for selling cannabis, and was originally sentenced to life in prison, even though he was in jail only for dealing marijuana, with no violent crimes or other charges added. This was his third strike selling cannabis, which is why he was given such a severe sentence. He would have served life, but a massive campaign was launched to get him released, once many states legalized, and cannabis advocates caught wind of his absurd plight. It is no surprise that as soon as he got out, he started looking to get in on the right side of the cannabis industry.
Mizanskey, now 62 years old, is already lobbying for cannabis reform after having only been out of prison for three months. He reached out to New Approach Missouri, about helping them to collect signatures in order to get cannabis on the ballot for November.
Fittingly, Mizanskey first told this news to the Riverfront Times in Missouri, the paper that first broke the story “How a Missouri Man Could Die in Prison for Weed,” the headline that started an online media frenzy and a bunch of rewrites, finally resulting in his release.
Mizanski is now free, and collecting signatures for New Approach Missouri, wasting no time trying to make cannabis legal in his home state so that others don’t have to go through what he went through.
“I finally made it to freedom,” he told the Riverfront Times when he was released from prison. “There’s a lot of people in here that deserve the same thing.”
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