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.
You are welcome. I am glad it was helpful.
Agreed.
I disagree. IF the allegations are true, then Rush did not say what he said in 1995 and then go out and deliberately play with fire in 1996. It seems likely that he got hooked accidentally, realized how easy it is to get addicted, and changed his mind about locking up addicts. I don't consider it a character flaw to learn from experience -- I consider it admirable.
Now, if he did advocate locking up addicts while addicted, then he's a hypocrite.
Everyone is endanger of getting addicted if they use those substances. By that reasoning, we are all addicts.
Learn a little more about addiction and addicts, then post.
Learn a little about human behavior before posting. Its a condition brought on by behavior, not a disease.
Yours is very modern interpretation: find a victim and feel sorry for him or her.
Sorry: a responsible, mature person does not get hooked accidentally; and, secondly, even if that happened, such a person does not contuinually and habitually break the law and buy illegal drugs but seeks how to get "unhooked."
He is not a victim: he faces the consequences of his own choices and his own decisions.
I disagree with the first assertion. While Prohibition certainly fed organized crime, the evidence from alcohol related disease and death figures suggest that it did, indeed, make alcohol use less prevalent. And I have every reason to believe that anti-drug laws do the same thing.
As for the crime committed by drug users, you need to account for the fact that many drugs render the addict unable to hold down a regular job and sometimes even more profoundly unable to take care of themselves. Needing $1 or $100 is similarly problematic for someone with no job and no money.
THe war on drugs is the best thing that ever happened to organized crime. The Dons of Drugdom wake up in a cold sweat after a nightmare that drugs have been legalized and taxed, and the taxes are funding education of non-users, treatment of users and for searching their vile asses down and putting them away forever.
That illegal drugs feed organized crime is beyond question. That's not the problem. The problem is that most people do not believe that making drugs legal will not increase their use and most people do not believe that the expected increase in use will be relatively harmless.
Terse, enough?...yes. But IMO, the federal government doesn't have any business enforcing state laws.
I think this assertion is false. Almost every law we have is done "half-way" and does not inevitably get abandoned or result in a police state.
We're not talking about just one law here. It's a cabinet level office, a federal agency, and a large part of the Justice Department as well as whole gaggle of over-reaching laws and federal regulations. One law can be dealt with, but this has become firmly entrenched and grown throughout the much of the federal government. And it grows every year. IMO, if it keeps growing, it WILL bring about a police state if left unchecked, especially since these agencies know how easy it is to scare the nit-wit soccer moms into believing that if it doesn't get bigger every year then their kids are going to become junkies.
We've got laws against theft, rape, and murder and these things still go on in the streets, in private homes, and in the jails. Are you suggesting that we should make these things legal?
Ye Gods, not that straw man argument again. No, it's not about making murder and rape legal as a means of reducing crime. That's up there with not giving out grades in school to decrease the dropout rate. There are laws against murder and rape because those two actions violate the rights of others. There is no victim in drug use other than the person using the drugs possibly harming themselves. If drug users want to ruin their lives, fine, that is their right. That is the risk of freedom. This isn't Nerf-World, where all the sharp edges have been rounded off and padded for our own protection. If you are not free to mess up your own life, how free are you? How can you truely be the master of you own fate? This was tried in the 1920's and it failed miserably. But at least those particular "drug warriors" respected our Constitution enough to do it the right way, via the amendment process. It was a testimate to the character of the country at the time when they realized that they made a mistake, admitted it and repealed that amendment. That is the stregnth of character that this country needs to find again.
Well, no one goes on forever, but the reality is that many people are addicts and are quite functional, as is Rush, for decades.
Jail time for Limbaugh is unthinkable and serves no one
Right. I quite agree but why is it thinkable for others?
I DOUBT this man recalled this quote; much less that Rush ever spoke it ...
You're misinformed. The fourth amendment has been severely eroded by the war on drugs. Here's an article on a recent example where 38 people were imprisoned based solely on the testimony of one corrupt undercover cop (no other evidence).
http://news.mysanantonio.com/story.cfm?xla=saen&xlb=180&xlc=1070131
Excerpt: Forty-six people, 39 of them black, were arrested in the 1999 cocaine sting in the small Panhandle town of Tulia, a farming community near Amarillo.
Thirty-eight defendants were convicted and imprisoned based on what Blackburn contends was fabricated testimony by undercover agent Tom Coleman.
"There was absolutely no evidence to back up (Coleman's) accusations," said Blackburn, who fought, along with the ACLU, to have the convictions overturned or the cases dismissed.
A major break in unraveling the state's case came while White was awaiting trial. Twelve days before the trial, she was offered probation in exchange for a plea, but she refused, Blackburn said.
The next day, a bank in Oklahoma, where White lived at the time, found a record showing she was in the lobby depositing a check around the time Coleman claimed she was selling drugs in Tulia, Blackburn said.
White deposited a $168 check and took $8 of it in cash. "That $8 saved her life," Blackburn said.
Though White's charge was dismissed, three of her siblings served a combined eight years and 22 months in prison before being pardoned.
Silly argument. That's like asking why someone who wants apple pie for dessert can't just enjoy chocolate mousse instead. Maybe they don't like chocolate mousse.
This is a common misconception. There are a lot of people in federal prison solely for marijuana use. There have been many arrests in Florida for illegal procurement/use of prescription drugs.
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