Former Duluth head shop owner reacts to Biden commuting his drug sentence

A man who ran a notorious head shop in downtown Duluth is one of the people on President Joe Biden’s clemency list.

Jim Carlson served 11 years of a 17.5-year federal sentence. He was found guilty on 51 counts related to selling synthetic drugs at his shop, The Last Place on Earth. After Biden’s clemency last week, Carlson will now serve three years probation before his sentence is considered complete.

“The hardest part is all done,” he told MPR News host Tom Crann.

St. Louis County Sheriff Gordon Ramsay publicly denounced Biden’s decision to commute Carlson’s sentence.

“There was a lot of damage being done to downtown and to the users of these drugs,” Ramsay told MPR News.

MPR News host Tom Crann spoke with Carlson just hours after his clemency became official — and his ankle bracelet was cut off — on Friday.

Below is a transcript of their conversation, edited for clarity and time.

I want to talk about the reaction to your clemency. Politicians from Amy Klobuchar to Pete Stauber have joined former Duluth police chief, now St. Louis County Sheriff Gordon Ramsay in questioning the president’s decision. What’s your reaction to all of this criticism?

I would sit in prison and I’d look at guys that would murder, they’d rape, they were child molesters and they all got less time than me and for the draconian sentences that they dish out in the in the U.S., it’s just preposterous.

Reports from that time state what you were doing was causing chaos in downtown Duluth, and that people who took whatever you were selling were winding up in emergency rooms and terribly ill. Is that all true?

Not all of it’s true. I mean people drink, and you’re going to have some that are alcoholics and they get in a car and they shouldn’t drive and they crash and kill somebody. But does that mean that nobody in the U.S. should be allowed to have a drink because of a few that abuse it?

But the alcohol and cigarettes are labeled as dangerous, whereas what you were selling was incorrectly, inaccurately or vaguely labeled.

Who wants to do synthetic when you can get the real God-given herb that people want? The government wouldn’t allow the real thing to be sold. And right now, for example, almost all the vaporizers that you buy in the country — vape pens have the same product that I got locked up for — everybody’s buying and selling with no consequences.

I want to talk about the commutation. Were you surprised by it? How does it work? Did you petition for it? Is there an attorney involved?

I never give up on anything. My relatives are from Sweden, and I’m a Taurus, so that’s the two worst possibilities you can have for stubbornness.

I get a sense of this stubbornness from you talking, but I’m wondering if your time behind bars has changed you in any way.

I tried to get it to affect me as little as possible in a negative manner, like, for example, Nelson Mandela. He went in as a terrorist and left as a president. He was the same guy, and he didn’t do nothing different.

There might be people listening in Duluth who would hear you compare yourself to Nelson Mandela and say: ‘No, I don't accept that comparison.’ How would you respond?

Well, you know, there’s haters everywhere, and the people that know me know a different me than what the media portrays me as.