Buckley v. the D.E.A.

NY Times ^ | February 28, 2008 | John Tierney

[neverdem]

In the slide show I narrated about the late William F. Buckley, Jr., I didn’t have room to get into a couple of issues we’ve been debating here at the Lab: the Drug Enforcement Administration’s campaigns against medical marijuana and against doctors who treat chronic-pain patients.

Mr. Buckley was worried about the D.E.A. well before the OxyContin scare inspired the agency’s Operation Cotton Candy and led to doctors like William Hurwitz and Bernard Rottschaefer being sent to prison. In 1995, after criticizing presidents and members of Congress for pursuing a war on drugs he considered futile, Mr. Buckley wrote:

But perhaps the worst offender is the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration — not so much the agents who risk their lives trying to apprehend major drug traffickers as the ideologically driven bureaucrats who intimidate and persecute doctors for prescribing pain medication in medically appropriate (but legally suspicious) doses, who hobble methadone programs with their overregulation, who acknowledge that law enforcement alone cannot solve the drug problem but then proceed to undermine innovative public-health initiatives.

I am often baffled by the resistance of conservatives to drug-policy reform, but encouraged by the willingness of many to reassess their views once they have heard the evidence. Conservatives who oppose the expansion of federal power cannot look approvingly on the growth of the federal drug-enforcement bureaucracy and federal efforts to coerce states into adopting federally formulated drug policies. Those who focus on the victimization of Americans by predatory criminals can hardly support our massive diversion of law-enforcement resources to apprehending and imprisoning nonviolent vice merchants and consumers. Those concerned with over-regulation can hardly countenance our current handling of methadone, our refusal to allow over-the-counter sale of sterile syringes, our prohibition of medical marijuana.

[robertpaulsen]

Drug use has no effect on the rest of us? Is that what you want me to believe? I'm supposed to believe you rather than my lyin' eyes?

Legal alcohol doesn't ruin enough lives for you? We need to legalize even more drugs?

[robertpaulsen]

"LOL, with the amount of time you spend on FR, I don’t think what you’re aware of is an accurate picture of any reality."

Gosh. Maybe you're right.

Please provide me with one example of the police trying "to track down people who are using drugs without bothering other people."

[William Terrell]

Drug use has no more effect on us than a hundred other risky behaviors, including voting democrat.

What do you care for lives of people whom you never heard of? Do you cry over the nationwide obituaries every day?

So some fools get hooked and ruin their lives? You gonna babysit everybody? Right now, anybody that wants any drug can get it.

But now the drugs are of such high cost they may have to injure another to buy it, and the hysteria of keeping people away from drugs have opened up inroads into American freedoms and liberties that are beyond writ of Habeas Corpii.

The price is too high, and people still die.

All in the name of making sure that people live as long as possible, are productive as possible and pay as much tax revenue as possible, like tobacco and fatty foods.

Not good enough, slick. Give your policies to Bob Mugabe where they belong.

[supercat]

But they were going after a drug dealer, not user.

Maybe they're supposedly going after the big dealers, but I don't believe it for a second.

If the police were actually interested in going after big dealers, they would put a lot more careful preparation into their raids. If the police want to bust a lot of poor shmucks who can't afford any sort of lawyer, it's pretty easy to target dwellings in areas where drug use is common; it's not hard to find a judge to rubber-stamp warrants based on pure hearsay, and even if the targets are effectively random they're bound to score some little hits. Such tactics might not benefit society, but when the politicians are up for reelection they can boast of all the criminals they put behind bars.

Maybe they're not really "tracking down" users, but merely taking pot-shots in the hopes of hitting some. But that's even worse than tracking them down.

If a guy is stopped at a DUI checkpoint and has a dead body in the back seat, I think he should be charged. But hey, that's me.

If hundreds of cars are stopped at a DUI checkpoint that failed to yield a substantial number of DUI convictions, the checkpoint shouldn't have existed in the first place.

[tear gas]

I just figured that anyone who is a dope addict would be inclined to oppose putting dope addicts in jail. I guess there could be exceptional (masochistic) cases.

Anyway, I never hear Rush calling for enforcement of our drug laws.

[robertpaulsen]

"I guess there could be ..."

You seem to do a lot of that. Guessing.

I'm more impressed with facts. When you get some, let me know.

[tear gas]

I'm more impressed with facts. When you get some, let me know.

I provided FACTS:

FACT 1: I have never met a dope addict that was in favor of jailing dope addicts.

FACT 2: Rush Limbaugh is a recovering dope addict.

FACT 3: Rush Limbaugh has a daily opinion radio show.

FACT 4: I have not heard Rush opine that we should jail dope addicts on his daily opinion radio show

From those facts, it is reasonable to draw the inference that Rush Limbaugh is almost certainly NOT in favor of jailing dope addicts.

You're the one that doesn't have any facts.