It’s a common police technique to bust the user to get leverage on him to tesify against the dealer. To get off the hot seat he has to give up someone higher up the food chain.
You’re right – he hasn’t discussed it much that I recall. But I remember from reading his first book that he said something about drugs being poisons, and about dealers being evil and soulless or something to that effect. And on the World’s Smallest Political Quiz he reportedly answered the question about drug laws by saying that we should focus on stronger law enforcement, not better medical treatment of users.
I’m not sure I entirely understand what you’re saying, but it’s worth noting that opioids are not universally addictive – it seems that only about 1/3 of the general population is susceptible to opioid addiction. (Hypotheses about this resulting from variations among the endorphin systems and mu-opioid receptors abound, but I haven’t seen any real studies to that effect.) Apparently, the proportions of people who experience euphoria, dysphoria, and no strong emotional response from opiods are roughly equal.
And the vast majority of patients who use opioids for legitimate pain-control purposes do not become addicted to them, even with long-term use. (Of course, most people will develop tolerance and physical dependence with long-term opioid use, but this is a separatate from addiction, despite the two phenomenon being frequently confused.)
But in any case, my point was more that people who abuse prescription opioids are the ultimate reason that doctors are so reluctant to effectively treat legitimate chronic pain patients. In the chronic pain support group I used to belong to, the general consensus was that people who obtained prescription opioids for recreational use were doing legitimate patients a grave disservice, and they should stop doing so and obtain their opioids legally from a methadone clinic instead.
Rush didn’t say much about drugs = Bill Bennett didn’t say much about gambling.
What next?
George W. BUllSHit never offficially condemned lying?
kanicbird
Who are these “less-able” brethren? Ditto-heads, of course,
It seemed from the beginning like Rush wouldn’t get in much, if any, trouble legally, so the NewsMax story is pretty much just stating the obvious – it’s more the trouble to his career, or at least his credibility, that I’d be worried about if I were him. The perceived hypocrisy, and all that. In any case, NewsMax is not exactly an objective news source, so we’ll have to wait and see.
I Love Me, Vol. I, regarding your earlier post: I don’t know what the general sentiment is, but I actually do sympathize with Rush’s problem as far as the addiction goes; I don’t particularly care for the guy, but I do sympathize with his problem. I hope he learn from it as well. About the only part that really irritates me is that he chose to feed his addiction the way he did. On the one hand, I’m glad for his health that he wasn’t out buying heroin on the street. But prescription drug abuse does hurt people, and not just the user (in fact, as long as the user takes care to avoid the super-constipation that can result from opioid use, there really aren’t any long-term health problems associated with opioid abuse in and of itself). And it’s completely unnecessary, since opioids for addiction treatment are available legally and in a much more efficient form at methadone clinics. But in reality, the positions are often reversed: addicts will get their fix from prescription painkillers, and one study found that nearly 20% of patients at a methadone clinic were actually chronic pain patients who were obtaining their painkillers there because they were unable to find a doctor to help them.