William Joseph Foster, 51, broke Oklahoma law when he grew marijuana in the basement of his Tulsa home.

He claimed the crop was there to help ease his arthritis pain. A jury didn’t believe him or didn’t care, and he was convicted and sentenced to 93 years in state prison.

Think about that for a second. Almost everyone can nearly immediately call to mind a violent crime where the criminal had a lesser sentence than 93 years in prison.

Foster got that sentence for growing plants that get people high.

An appeals court agreed that the sentence was too hefty, and reduced the sentence to 20 years.

Foster was paroled in 2001 and moved to California, where he obtained a doctor’s prescription to grow and use marijuana.

But with six years left on his Oklahoma parole, a California parole officer released Foster from supervision, and when Oklahoma wanted him to sign papers that would extend his period of parole supervision, he refused under the advice of an attorney who said the papers would have effectively extended his parole by four years.

Now Oklahoma officials are trying to revoke Foster’s parole here and send him back to an Oklahoma prison — for doing in California what is legal in California.

Our prisons are bursting at the seams, Oklahoma is gaining a “throw the book at them” reputation as consistently one of the top states in incarcerating its own citizens, and now we’re chasing down a guy who was released by his parole officer for doing something that is legal where he now lives.

Foster isn’t Oklahoma’s problem anymore, but we’re spending taxpayer dollars trying to make him Oklahoma’s problem again so we can pay for his room and board for six years.

That’s a waste of money and time, and we should cut it out.