Point 1) Usually that is the case--a first time a offender gets probation and rehab inner city or anywhere else.
Point 2) Objectively I have far more sympathy for someone who has chronic pain finding a way to treat it and then getting hooked then someone who got hooked partying with their n'er do well friends.
Point 3) Nonethleless, if Rush gets back on the drugs after rehab he should face jail time. He needs to straighten his life out NOW or face the consequences.
Point 4) if we are going to ever decriminalize drugs we will have to do it the libertarian way, not the liberal way--people who overdose don't get free medical treatment (at others expense), people who choose to waste their lives away on drugs don't get welfare, or SS or anything else. etc etc.
A lot of people have been hoping that once all the childish name-calling and attacks from the Rush-hating left subsided that maybe, just maybe, this would be the point where the entire drug war would be reconsidered. After all, if someone like Rush could get caught up in it, it could happen to anyone. Instead the conservatives have decided to rationalize this as being different because these were "legal" drugs, and that somehow addiction is cleaner and more acceptable if the product originates from a pharmacy instead of an indoor hydroponics operation or imported from Columbia. The drug war has failed, just like the war on poverty failed.