Posted on 10/17/2003 10:34:06 AM PDT by RJCogburn
Rush Limbaugh may not be arrested, let alone spend time behind bars, for illegally buying narcotic painkillers. "We're not sure whether he will be charged," a law enforcement source told CNN earlier this month. "We're going after the big fish, both the suppliers and the sellers."
If the conservative radio commentator escapes serious legal consequences, there will be speculation about whether a pill popper who wasn't a wealthy celebrity would have received such lenient treatment. Yet the distinction between dealer and user drawn by CNN's source is both widely accepted and deeply imbedded in our drug laws.
That doesn't mean it makes sense. If drug use is the evil the government wants to prevent, why punish the people who engage in it less severely than the people who merely assist them? That's like giving a murderer a lighter sentence than his accomplice.
Another argument for sending Limbaugh to jail was suggested by the talk radio king himself. Newsday columnist Ellis Henican has called attention to remarks Limbaugh made in 1995 concerning the disproportionate racial impact of the war on drugs.
"What this says to me," Limbaugh told his radio audience, "is that too many whites are getting away with drug use....The answer to this disparity is not to start letting people out of jail because we're not putting others in jail who are breaking the law. The answer is to go out and find the ones who are getting away with it, convict them, and send them up the river too."
Before we start building a boat for Limbaugh, perhaps we should consider arguments for letting him keep his freedom. The strongest is that it's nobody's business but his if he chooses to take hydrocodone and oxycodone, for whatever reason, as long as he's not hurting anyone else.
When the painkiller story broke, the New York Daily News reported that Limbaugh's lawyers "refused to comment on the accusations and said any 'medical information' about him was private and not newsworthy." But on his show the next day, Limbaugh already was moving away from that position, promising to tell his listeners "everything there is."
A week later, he announced that he had started taking opioids "some years ago" for post-surgical pain, and "this medication turned out to be highly addictive." He said he was entering treatment to "once and for all break the hold this highly addictive medication has on me."
By emphasizing the addictive power of narcotics, Limbaugh suggested that the drugs made him do it, belying his declaration that "I take full responsibility for my problem." He also reinforced the unreasonable fear of opioids that results in disgraceful undertreatment of pain in this country. Contrary to Limbaugh's implication, research during the last few decades has found that people who take narcotics for pain relief rarely become addicted to their euphoric effects.
Limbaugh's quick switch from privacy claim to public confession was reminiscent of Bill Bennett's humiliating retreat on the issue of his gambling. Before renouncing the habit, the former drug czar noted that losing large sums of money on slots and video poker hadn't "put my family at risk." Nor does it seem that the time Bennett spent in casinos interfered with his family or professional life. It certainly did not keep him away from TV cameras and op-ed pages.
Likewise, drug use did not stop Limbaugh from signing an eight-year contract reportedly worth $285 million in 2001, or from maintaining a demanding schedule that included three hours on the radio five days a week, or from retaining his status as the nation's leading talk radio host, reaching nearly 20 million listeners on some 600 stations. His case illustrates the distinction between the strength of one's attachment to a substance and its practical impact, which is only made worse by drug laws that transform private problems into public scandals.
Whatever toll Limbaugh's drug habit may have taken on his personal life, it does not seem to have affected his professional performance. If his former housekeeper hadn't ratted on him, we might never have known about all those pills.
I'd say that's how it should have been, except that Limbaugh seems to prefer a different approach. "If people are violating the law by doing drugs," he told his listeners in 1995, "they ought to be accused and they ought to be convicted and they ought to be sent up." Maybe the government should respect his wishes.
And will the pro-druggies admit that Rush didn't walk into the drug culture looking for a kick.
You know the part of taking pain killers with a medical professionals advice after serious back surgery.
There is also an inverse relationship here: the one who said the quoted words in 1995 should not have gotten hooked in 1996. That is hypocricy, and the accusers are correct.
That is not hypocrisy, the accusers are not correct.
People say and do things in life all the time that contradict things they've said in the past. That doesn't make all people hypocrites.
People grow, people change and people encounter situations they never would have forseen in their lives.
People who thought sleeping around was OK when they were young can easily decide it is a sin when I find somebody they are committed to.
According to your faulty argument above that would make them a hypocrite.
There are plenty of people who have been against drug abuse, especially for recreational purposes, who at some time in their lives need painkillers to make their life bearable and can become addicted.
To call that hypocrisy requires a standard of conduct that the accusers certainly could not maintain themselves under similar circumstances in all cases in their lives.
The accusers are the real hypocrites. Not Rush
This is flawed reasoning: laws, like drugs, are not interchangeable and are different in their effects. Some laws work, and some don't. Gun control laws, for example, definitely do cause more people to commit crimes than they deter.
In a broad sense (without assessing the details), yes. But I think that's a symptom of a much larger abuse of the commerce clause to regulate more than interstate and international commerce. Where the war on drugs seeks to interdict drugs entering the country, that seems Constitutional to me.
Funny I dont remember any COPS saying he had illeagle drugs just some drug addicted maid saying it !
If hes guilty of doing Illeagle drugs so be it he should'nt be any different from anyone else BUT lets get real evidence instead of hearsay and conjecture .
Perscription is not illeagle YET !
Don't forget that ever popular LP non-sequiter, caffeine.
:) Amazing how that works. Purist ideologies (on either side) don't tend to work in practice.
If pot grown in Utah is transported to and sold in Colorado, then that is the feds territory. But if it's grown, sold and used in Utah, then it's Utah's issue, not the feds. That's like asking the Ohio Hiway Patrol asking the FBI to crack down on street racing.
And alcohol was banned by constitutional amendment. When the people decided that Prohibition went too far, they repealed the amendment. A constitutional democratic republic at work.
And that is the way that drug prohibition should have been handled, but Washington DC and the drug warriors decided that it be too inconvenient to follow the constitutional process.
But if soccer moms are worried about their children becoming junkies and you believe that this is feeding the War on Drugs, do you really believe that suggesting that drugs should be legalized is going to address their fear?
Not as long as the Justice department keeps feeding them propaganda that all those drugs are going to jump out from behind every tree and parked car to addict their kids, maybe would realize that good, hands-on parenting has more to do with keeping their kids from getting high than increasing the DEA's budget.(Off topic, personally, I believe that those who push the "...for the children" mantra are a bigger threat to this country than cocaine ever will be)
First, many people actually do care about what other poeple do to themselves. I know that libertarians find this patronizing and offensive but that's life.
And on the 8th day, man created Nerf-World...
Second, when drug users lose the ability to support and care for themselves, they become everyone's problem and do harm those around them.
That was what the prohibitionists said in the 1920's. We didn't become a nation of drunks after the 18th amendment was repealed. But it did get organized crime out of the alcohol business...including the Kennedys.
If I don't desire the freedom to mess up my own life, what difference does it make? You can give me the freedom to shoot myself in the head but what good is that freedom if I have no desire to shoot myself in the head?
How much more freedom are you willing to give up? It might not mean that much to you, but I don't much like the idea of the feds mandating that the training wheels stay on my bike for my own good. If I take them off, I might fall down and get a skinned knee. Or not. I'm not a Libertarian or a drug user, but I don't have to be to know that I'm big enough to make my own choices about what I do to myself. Yes, I might make a mistake, but it will be MY mistake.
So it is "bad character" that makes people not realize that they should legalize drugs. Yeah, that argument will win you lots of support.
It's not a matter of bad or good charachter, but the level of stregnth of that character. Remember the old saying "Hard times make for strong character." Things were pretty hard in the depression. Maybe the next one will be just as useful ;)
Drugs are not the same as alcohol. The differences are real and significant. That said, I think a case can be made that marijuana is comparable in social effects to alcohol. I don't think the same case can be made for crack and heroin.
As for Nerf-World, there is always too much of a good thing. I can say, though, that I like having an FDA inspecting food and medicines so that I don't need to take the time to individually assess the safety of every bit of food or medicine that I put in my mouth. I do think, however, that there is room for "This isn't safe but we are going to let you do it anyway. Just don't come and sue us if you get hurt, sick, or die." Cigarettes fall into this category. But I don't think the solution is to eliminate the FDA and legalize everything, buyer beware. There were problems that led to these things being created. The problem is that safety, like taxes, falls on a sort of Laffer curve and at some point, the cost to increase safety any further is astronomical.
Respectfully submitted from Websters....
Main Entry: hy·poc·ri·sy
1 : a feigning to be what one is not or to believe what one does not; especially : the false assumption of an appearance of virtue or religion
Those you speek of may be incorrect in you opinion, but hypocritcal would not be accurate.
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