Airman sentenced for drugs Published Oct. 24, 2003 By Jeanne Grimes Oklahoma City Air Logistics Center Public Affairs TINKER AIR FORCE BASE, Okla. (AFPN) -- An airman assigned to the 552nd Aircraft Maintenance Squadron here will spend the next 16 months in a military prison, receive a bad conduct discharge, and forfeit all pay and allowances for illegal drug use and distribution.Airman Basic Raymond Reibel told a military judge Oct. 21 he smoked methamphetamine weekly between Sept. 29, 2002, and June 4, and furnished the illegal drug to other airmen “once every two weeks.”The charges against Reibel included wrongful use and distribution of methamphetamine, wrongful use of marijuana, providing alcohol to people younger than 21 and breaking restriction.Reibel told Lt. Col. James Flanary, a circuit military judge from Randolph Air Force Base, Texas, he knew the drug use was wrong.In seeking mercy, Reibel apologized to the Air Force and asked Flanary to “consider a sentence to allow me a future.“The Air Force made a difference in my life,” Reibel told the court, recounting the feelings of awkwardness that developed after his assignment here in July 2002.“(Those feelings) grew to the point (where) I made a decision to violate the law,” he said. “I became addicted. I now realize how methamphetamine has destroyed my life. The person I am today is not the person I have always been.”Capt. Donna Rueppell, area defense counsel from Offut AFB, Neb., also urged Flanary to be lenient.“The defendant’s crimes are serious and the person who realizes this most today is Airman Reibel,” she said. “Methamphetamine makes normally good people do things they would never do.”But the prosecutor, Maj. Bryan Martin of the staff judge advocate office here, portrayed a side of Reibel that was far different.“He has no respect for the law (and) no respect for authority,” Martin said. “He’s a lifestyle methamphetamine user … he has brought others into his methamphetamine lifestyle.”Martin asked Flanary to put Reibel behind bars for two years for his disobedience as well as the drug and alcohol use.Reibel could have been sentenced to more than 22 years in prison and ordered to pay a fine.