PRISONER OF WAR

To the editor:

This was my 11th Christmas in the federal prison at Terre Haute.

Christmas time brings back memories; some good and some bad. It brings back
memories of being free, and memories of my Christmases in 1967 and 1968,
while serving as a young medic paratrooper in Vietnam. I received hundreds
of cards and Christmas packages from people back home, thanking me and
showing their appreciation for me serving my country.

When I returned from Vietnam, not only did I bring back the memories, the
malaria, the wounds and the medals, (my country said I was a hero), but I
also brought back a drug habit. Eventually, the drug habit won over and
landed me in a new war. This time, as a "prisoner of the drug war."

I no longer receive the Christmas cards and packages, although I'm still
the same person I was back then, when my country said I was a war hero,
albeit much older, and I no longer have a drug habit. But, now my country
says I'm a threat to society, "for a nonviolent drug crime," and I must
spend the rest of my Christmases here in federal prison.

Recently, the Supreme Court ruled, in Apprendi vs. New Jersey, that
sentences like mine were un-Constitutional. But, Congress passed a law in
1996 called the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, that says I
can no longer file an appeal because of a technicality. So, I must sit
here. Christmas after Christmas, thinking of the memories, for the rest of
my life.

Do you really think the "war on drugs" is working?

Michael L. Cummings

Terre Haute