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SirAllen:

It may never happen where Rush lives in Florida, but there are places all over America where it happens all the time. I can think of several cases locally where people were arrested and convicted for "doctor shopping." We had a case a while back where a prominent local news anchor was charged and his case went to trial. He was addicted to hydrocodone and was going to doctors all over town getting multiple overlapping prescriptions. He even tried to get my father who is also a doctor to prescribe him pain medication. He was acquitted at trial though probably because the jury thought, like my father, that it was a pretty crappy thing to do to go after someone in this type of case who had a legitimate health condition and became addicted to the drugs he was prescribed for it. Incidentally though rumor has it that this guy was fairly heavy into cocaine and other drugs before the neurological condition for which he was prescribed pain medication ever surfaced.

Anyway, it certainly does happen all the time in the in many states. And I keep hearing things that indicate a common misconception people have. People seem to think that it's a nationwide policy to seek treatment rather than punishment for drug addicts, especially those who became addicted to drugs they had been prescribed. This is not the case. Treatment not punishment may be the policy in many places in America, but certainly not everywhere. Moreover, the law itself doesn't delineate in most if not all states between people who got hooked on drugs they had actually been prescribed and people who bought these drugs off the street and got hooked. And regardless of whether states or counties have a "treatment not punishment" policy that does not necessarily mean the accused in these cases get away without being prosecuted and convicted of a crime, which in many cases turns out to be a felony that stays on their records. Even where they favor treatment over punishment, people are still prosecuted for these crimes. They just might not end up doing any time over it and if they are lucky enough to be in a state that does things like deferred adjudication they might be squeak by without a felony conviction on their records.