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Who benefits from Cameron Douglas getting at least 10 years in prison? No one. But the "government" is hellbent on punishing him for the crime of being an addict. So much money is wasted attacking and punishing people in the "Justice Industrial Complex" that could be much better used in helping people. To say we are Christian is a literal absurdity.

Cameron -- the son of Academy Award winner Michael Douglas -- filed a guilty plea this week for dealing drugs that will land him in prison for at least 10 years to a maximum of life. This stems from a Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) investigation based on information from unidentified informants who were methamphetamine users and drug dealers. In other words, these people gave Cameron up to save their own hides which actually was prohibited by a law in the early 1960's which outlawed bribing people with reduced sentences and the like in exchange for testimony. They were bribed for agreeing to be cooperating witnesses against Cameron and paid off by being allowed to plead guilty to lesser charges. Again totally absurd.

The methods the DEA used to terrify Cameron, forcing him to make a plea deal, are clearly at question here. They scared the living daylights out of him, telling him he would never see the light of day if he went to trial. Why would anyone in their right mind agree to a 10-year minimum sentence? In the U.S., this type of behavior is standard in procuring drug convictions of low-level drug offenders who wind up doing more time than a murderer or rapist often does. They are used as fuel for a very crooked justice system. Destroyed human lives are used justify the expenditure and theft of countless billions of dollars. Politicians use harsh measures to promote their candidacy and people fall for the deceptions all too quickly failing to take into account the destructive and counterproductive consequences these measures have to our nation and greater world in which we live.

A good friend of Cameron Douglas said that Cameron Douglas has been hooked on heroin for the last several years. Why else would he compel his girlfriend to bring over a toothbrush box containing 20 bags of dope while he was under house arrest several months ago? He needs drug treatment, not a decade or more of hard time in prison.

The U.S. is obsessed with punishing good people like Cameron. The imprisonment itself is immoral and counterproductive to public safety. By locking him up and those like him, our government is wasting resources that could otherwise be used to stop violent crime or actually treat people in the way Jesus or other holy figures commanded. Common decency compels us to overhaul the mess of a system we have today. One doesn't need religious belief to see that the system is a cancerous infection of our greater society. It does us a great deal more harm than good.

Today, there are over 500,000 Americans in prison for nonviolent drug law violations. The cost of incarcerating such individuals is draining state and federal budgets and producing idiotic solutions by politicians to make up for its burgeoning costs -- like the recent cuts in health care, education, and other social service programs.

It will cost tax payers an estimated $45,000 a year to keep him in prison. Add to that the loss we receive from the productive capacity which would have resulted from treating these, our fellow brothers and sisters, with kindness and love. His family and friends will no doubt mourn their loss while Douglas rots away in a federal prison for being a nonviolent drug addict.

Just like the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, despite the deceptions to the contrary, was primarily done to justify the theft of trillions of dollars from the US treasury for the crooked "Military Industrial Complex", the people caught up in the system are used and abused primarily to justify a massive theft and waste of resources. The system, ever increasingly, exists to fuel itself. We are now doing things unthinkable less than a generation ago such as forced labor where prisoners are being used by major corporations to increase their bottom lines. This amounts to a theft of not just resources but the very soul of our nation.

Should we treat drug addiction as a criminal matter or a medical problem? For most people, treatment is a much more effective way to overcome addiction, yet our prisons are full of drug-addicted individuals. Nonviolent drug offenders should be given an opportunity to receive treatment, not jail time, for their drug use. This would be a more effective and affordable solution for the individual and the community.

Thanks to the war on drugs, and especially mandatory minimum sentencing policies, average drug offenders like Cameron Douglas are sentenced to extraordinary amounts of time in prison. We need to end these draconian drug laws by offering drug-addicted individuals treatment instead of prison.