He was serving a life sentence for cannabis. Then he got a phone call from Ivanka Trump | Leafly

Craig Cesal is living proof of how ludicrous the nation’s war on drugs became at its low point.

Before becoming entangled in America’s war on drugs, his only prior conviction was a $150 fine for walking into a Bennigan’s with a beer.

Cesal, who is from the Chicago area, was in the prime of his life, running a truck-repair business, when he was arrested by federal agents in 2002. One of Cesal’s clients was a long-haul trucking company whose drivers, it turned out, were moving shipments of marijuana around the American South. U.S. border agents at a checkpoint in Texas discovered 1,500…