Drug Rush Limbaugh to listeners: I belong in jail!

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.

Terse, enough?...yes. But IMO, the federal government doesn't have any business enforcing state laws.

The states do not have the authority to control interstate commerce. Since that role is reserved to the Congress, then it falls upon the Congress to assist states in controlling the movement of illegal and regulated goods between the states. Would you really rather prefer Utah, say, trying to control the transportation of goods into and out of Utah from, say, Colorado?

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.

And alcohol was banned by constitutional amendment. When the people decided that Prohibition went too far, they repealed the amendment. A constitutional democratic republic at work.

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.

If. If. I don't believe it will keep growing and I don't believe we'll be left with a police state. But if soccer moms are worried about their children becoming junkies and you believe that this is feeding the War on Drugs, do you really believe that suggesting that drugs should be legalized is going to address their fear?

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.

First, many people actually do care about what other poeple do to themselves. I know that libertarians find this patronizing and offensive but that's life. Second, when drug users lose the ability to support and care for themselves, they become everyone's problem and do harm those around them.

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.

The very act of forming into a society and submitting to a culture is an act of trading freedom for security. It has been thus for thousands of years and, for the most part, people have been opting for civilization and security.

If you are not free to mess up your own life, how free are you?

If I don't desire the freedom to mess up my own life, what difference does it make? You can give me the freedom to shoot myself in the head but what good is that freedom if I have no desire to shoot myself in the head?

How can you truely be the master of you own fate?

In what way?

This was tried in the 1920's and it failed miserably.

It failed. How "miserably" is open to debate, I think. But this is not the post-WWI period, the Roaring 20s, or the Depression and alcohol is not crack or heroin. The situations that led to a repeal of Prohibition after just over a decade are apparently not the same as teh situations that have not led to the repeal of the War on Drugs after more than two decades.

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.

So it is "bad character" that makes people not realize that they should legalize drugs. Yeah, that argument will win you lots of support.

Where did you get those figures?

They've appeared on the editorial page of the WSJ years ago and you can find them by doing web searches. They are certainly disputed and a large amount of subjective analysis is injected on both sides.

No offence intended, but do you also believe in the Sandman, Great Pumpkin, Easter bunny and Santa Claus?

No, but I also don't believe that laws, on balance, cause more people to commit crimes than they deter. If that's not true, than we need to change our entire legal system and not simply the War on Drugs.

Proof of their existance, in my opinion, is much more conclusive than is the evidence that any good thing has come from the war on drugs.

You don't believe that the war on drugs reduces drug use. Many people do. Convince them that they are wrong. Attacking their sanity and honor is not going to do that for you.

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