Todd Stimson recently became a little freer after being held as a political prisoner in the war on drugs.

He was released from prison April 23 after “serving” 25 months in a cage, following a 2015 conviction on two counts of trafficking marijuana, and one count each of possession with intent to sell, manufacturing and maintaining a place for a controlled substance.

The way he was arrested, you’d think he was a dangerous criminal.

Stimson said he was brushing his teeth on a July day in 2013 when he noticed police cars from the bathroom window. As he was going out to meet them, they busted in with assault weapons drawn on his kids.

“The treatment they give you…is in comparison to a terrorist,” he said in an interview with Chase Rachels, then with the Blue Ridge Liberty Project.

I met Stimson a month before the raid at the state Libertarian Party convention near his hometown of Fletcher, in Henderson County. There I learned of his company, the Blue Ridge Medical Cannabis Corporation, where he was growing to help others ease their ailments.

Stimson wasn’t operating in secret. In fact, he had an art of healing license from the state and paid the taxes on his crop. Prior to the raid, he posted: “Our 18th sales tax payment…is $760.05 to be sent in. $534.85 going to General State Fund and $225.20 going to Henderson County.”

As I wrote then, the government took money from Stimson to pay for the raid on him, making true the quote from Lysander Spooner: “If any man’s money can be taken by a so-called government, without his own personal consent, all his other rights are taken with it; for with his money the government can, and will, hire soldiers to stand over him, compel him to submit to its arbitrary will, and kill him if he resists.”

Luckily, Stimson wasn’t killed.

William R. Toler is editor of the Anson Record.