Yes, but some drugs have medicinal value and others don't. Some drugs can be helpful for medicinal reasons if not abused and others don't. BTW, you won't get far with the "cigarettes and alcohol are legal" stuff with me (I know these pothead arguments like the back of my hand). You can't argue that all poisons should be legal because some already are. That's specious. Our country has been harmed enough by tobacco and alcohol - we don't need more poisons competing on the marketplace.
Oxycontin is an opiate - one of the most addictive families of drugs. It also happens to have legitimate uses. Those legitimate uses do not negate its potential for abuse. If medical uses for marijuana and cocaine exist, and I believe some do, then I have no problem with their inclusion in the medical tool box - but that does not extend to your desire to spark up a doobie at the Phish concert, or snort/smoke/inject cocaine until you live under a bridge somewhere.
You're statement is either dishonest or ignorant. I have no interest in either advancing the drug war or letting Limbaugh off the hook for any hypocrisy he may be found to have engaged in. But the government makes very clear distinctions between drugs, and the efforts to fight their abuse.
There is a legal distinction between "hillbilly heroin" (a nickname now voiced with relish by the Left and, apparently, Libertarians) and the real thing. There is no ongoing war against Schedule II drugs. We have not dispatched Special Forces to Wilmington, Delaware to thwart the pharmaceutical manufacturers.
The relevance of Limbaugh's situation to the WOD is tangential at best. Claiming otherwise weakens your case. The case against the War on Drugs is a strong one without people throwing red herrings into it.
Do you know what your kids call that drug? "Hillbilly heroin"
Did you know it can cause hearing loss?
Drugs are drugs are drugs... Cigarettes and alcohol included..
I guess I'm addicted to drugs too. I take them every day. And I deal with the side effects: Moody-ness, depression, weight gain, fluid retention, osteoporossis. If I were to stop taking my pills every day, I would die. This isn't overstating things. The drug I take is prednisone, and I've been taking it since the mid-1980's.
According to your logic, I'm no different than crack-addicts on the street. Or maybe, since it's related to steroids, then I'm as bad as body builders who "dope up."
"Hillbilly Heroin" is oxycontin that's been crushed, defeating the time release feature of the drug. This is why it's so dangerous. Abusers get a huge rush, a sometimes fatal dose of the drug, which was designed to be released over a 12 hour period. When taken properly, you don't get a "rush" or euphoria from oxycontin. If you've ever listened to Rush, there's no way he could work at the level he does and be "impaired." The reason that I'm familiar with oxycontin (and with hydrocodone) is that I took them both (very rarely... I was more afraid of dealing with the possibility of addiction than of dealing with the pain) to treat the pain from a bad case of shingles. Until I had shingles, I thought I knew what "real" pain was, including having a lumbar disk extrude into my spinal canal, and having a torsion of the testicle. I was wrong!
I'm against the WOD... And that includes things like my prednisone.
Mark