"The fact is, there are other cases in Florida of non-celebrity people (in some cases veterans) becoming addicted to painkillers then being arrested for doctor shopping."
Could you please provide a link for this claim. According to Black and a story done on FNC, there has never been a conviction for the crime of Dr. Shopping...in Florida. In fact, the story pointed out that since 1987, only one case was brought foward but the defendant was involved in more than just Dr. Shopping...and he died before the case came to court. Source please.
Without providing reference, I believe I've read here on Freep that in Palm Beach County that there has been one other doctor shopping charge filed in the five years since the legislature passed the law, and the DA's office did that in an attempt to get information on drug dealers. I researched the number of police officers, etc. in Palm Beach County and the FBI stats on crime there. It came out to something like
72,000 crime reports a year for crimes against people and property. These numbers included murder, rape, aggravated assault, burglary, armed robbery, and theft of motor vehicles. It does not include any vice crimes, such as gambling, prostitution or drug sales or use. According to the Palm Beach County web site, there are something like
1100 sworn officers. The population base given on the first link is 1,097,962, and the Palm Beach County Sheriff's office lists served population at just over 600,000, so I'd assume the city has another 800 or so sworn police officers. This still comes out to over thirty crimes per day per sworn officer before even looking at vice operations, money laundering, embezzlement, shoplifting, simple assault, traffic accidents, suicides, drownings, etc.
With the number of police and DA office hours that have already been put into Limbaugh's case, it's obvious that he's being targeted.
Another poster (I'll ping him in a minute), wrote to you that there is uneven enforcement of drug laws. This is true, and there are several reasons. In Texas, where I live, small town cops are mostly bored. They'll pull you over for a license plate light being out. I've had a guy jump a median and follow me for two miles to pull me over for not signalling a lane change when there wasn't a car within a half mile of me on my side of the highway. One guy pulled me over, asked for my license, shot the sh*t for about 10 minutes and then let me go without ever telling me why he stopped me. A two ounce marijuana bust is a BIG deal to these guys.
In larger cities in Texas, you've got to DO something for cops to bother with you. I made a fire with my FD (big city), and the fire was started by the guy's marijuana lamp. He gutted a couple of apartments, but there was still a lot of dope around his place. Police were already on scene. We asked them what to do, they said "who cares?" and left. We made him pour it out and promise never to be burning down multiple apartments with his marijuana light again.
I've got mixed feelings about drug legalization, but for the most part, drug laws are a tool to lean on people or a way to have a 100% solved crime rate, since nobody files a crime report on drugs unless a bust is made.