I had gone to the police station to visit a friend who had been arrested for something involving cocaine. I boarded an elevator which contained several passengers including a fellow who had also been charged with a cocaine offense and who at that moment had a large quantity of cocaine wrapped around his chest. Apparently it was the same cocaine for which my friend had been arrested.

The elevator descended to the basement instead of stopping at the appropriate floor. Everyone departed from the elevator except me and the man with the cocaine. He turned to me and asked me to take a handful of the cocaine and put it in a coke cup which was in a trash can in the elevator.

I took a handful of the cocaine, put it into my pocket, took it back out of my pocket and finally put it into the coke cup. Having finished, I noticed white spots of cocaine powder all over me. Before I had time to wipe off the powder, the elevator door opened again and some plain-clothes policemen stepped onto the elevator.

They were obviously suspicious of something and began sniffing the air. One of them touched the powder on my jacket with his finger, smelled it and told me I was under arrest. They also arrested the other fellow.

I knew that I had been arrested once before and that this arrest would have serious consequences. I would go to jail for a long time.

The policeman took me off the elevator. On that floor I saw the friend whom I had come to visit. He was sitting in a room behind a glass wall. He looked at me and said, "You too?"

I answered, "Yes."

I told him cocaine was the basis of my arrest. He said something about "that damned stuff." I could tell he was, to some degree, glad to see I had also been arrested; but that didn't bother me. Perhaps it was a consolation to him that one of his friends was also in jail. I felt like saying something like "misery loves company."

But I was upset because I had been arrested. I kept thinking about how serious the matter was and how I surely would receive a stiff sentence. But suddenly I began thinking of what had just transpired as more of a story and not as something that had really happened. I walked out onto the street where I saw a group of people and I shouted, "Why are these people in jail?"

I was referring to people who had been charged with drug offenses. I wanted to express the sentiment that in the United States people should be asking why people were being arrested for drug charges. People shouldn't be put in jail for such offenses. It was a crime in and of itself to put people in jail for drug charges. I wanted people to really began asking themselves why these people were being put in jail.

I wanted people to know it was the drug dealers themselves who wanted drugs to be illegal. The laws, to a large extent, were controlled by the drug bosses. I thought about all the people who were in jail on drug charges and how their only hope for freedom was a change in the drug laws. If I myself were actually in jail for drug charges I would work very hard for a change in the drug laws so I might one day be set free.

I looked across the street and saw some people with machine guns had pulled up and had started shooting people. The machine gunners aimed in my direction. I jumped down behind a wall and began crawling up some stairs. Finally I rose and began running up the stairs.

Suddenly I met a man on the stairs with a machine gun who was just about to shoot a woman. I jumped him and wrestled the machine gun from him. I continued running up the stairs with the gun and ran through a door into a hotel. The door to the hotel was shot out behind me.

I began thinking I needed to find a room in the hotel, open the window and begin shooting down at the people in the street who had machine guns. Or, if I wanted, I could merely sit in the room and wait. If someone were to come in who appeared dangerous I could simply shoot them.