[kidd]

...condemned more than 400,000 Americans to prison for committing the same 'crime' as Rush Limbaugh...

Any stats on how many of these are first time offenders, with no intent to sell, for addiction to a prescription drug and in the absence of a history of crime?

Just the stats please, if you have them.

[noprob]

I really don't have the stats, I know there are a lot of people in jail for drug related crimes...

My point isn't to argue stats....

Why should we care what Rush or anyone else does in the privacy of their own home. The war on drugs is a failure, it has not decreased drug use one lousy bit, it's actually grown.

We spend billions of our hard owned dollars to make people "think" were helping.. Let's spend a fraction of that treating the addictions. Throwing people in jail does not solve the problem..

[jerseygirl]

No stats here- just several observations. Initially, people are not jailed for being addicted to prescription pills; they are jailed for the behaviors they engaged in to obtain the pills (prescription forgery, calling in prescriptions pretending to be a health care worker, stealing medications at work, even doctor-shopping in some cases). Many prescription addicts have no criminal history For first offenses, if they are lucky, they tend to get probation.Then, if during that period of probaton they are tested and found to be using drugs or alcohol,a jail sentence may or may not be imposed