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.
The only one babbling here is you.
There is medical proof of the genetics of addiction, you on the other hand, have nothing but your "opinions" to back up your ridiculous assertions.
Oh puh_leeez. The so-called proof you speak so highly shows about a 5% more probability to be an alcholic if you have a certain gene. That's far from proving much. Certainly there are genetic and environmental influences in everyhthing, but that in no way makes it a determining factor, just an influence. Even with external influences, all behavior comes down to your personal choice. Blaming a behavior purely on genetics is asnine. An addiction is a condition that is a result of a behavior. Just because it may have some genetic influence in no way makes it a disease. If someone is a recovering alcoholic, they are just that. They are no longer addicted, just more susceptible to becoming addicted. Pychologists play loose with words to promote some agenda, but no matter how many letters they put after their names, they are flat out wrong. End of discussion...
This article is a joke.
Clean, one day at a time, for several years now.
To the LEFTISTS in the media and throughout the country, ONLY ONE NEGATIVE reference about drug users OR ANY illegal or abnormal behavior is enough to brand any CONSERVATIVE a hypocrit.
You see LEFTISTS condone and even encourage most illegal and all abnormal behavior so they can NEVER be accused of what they consider the most evil of all crimes.......HYPOCRISY!!
For example, you state,
"The 14th Amendment in no way changes the clear meaning of that amendment unless you mean to argue that the 14th Amendment forces state governments to abide by the restricted powers of the Constitution and prohibits the states from excercising any powers not delegated to the United States."
With that said, consider the following, as posted at FreeRepublic.com:
US Supreme Court Mull Whether Police Can Demand Identity
WASHINGTON (AP)--The Supreme Court said Monday it will consider whether people have a constitutional right to refuse to tell police their names.
Justices will review the prosecution of a man under a Nevada law that requires people suspected of wrongdoing to identify themselves to police, or face arrest.
Isn't this action by the Supreme Court, in effect, stating that the 10th amendment is meaningless?
So, you then ask the next obvious question:
"Would you aregue that we should disband the state governments? If not, what purpose do you think they serve?"
I would not argue that we disband state governments, but the Supreme Court is slowly but surely rendering them obsolete and superflous.
I would like to see a return to the times before the 14th amendment when the people of each state could create the state of their choice, totalitarian or libertarian, as extremes, and the citizens would move to the state of their choice that best met their personal needs.
In effect, there would be a "market" of states to choose from.
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