Rush the junkie deserves better treatment than he’d allow others
Dr. Jay Davis, Arcata Eye, October 20, 2003
Rush Limbaugh a drug addict?
Whether you admire Rush or detest him (and few people are simply neutral), these charges must come as a shock. The conservative Mr. Limbaugh, no surprise, has zero public sympathy for drug abusers and has publicly stated they should be incarcerated.
Mr. Limbaugh’s defenders will doubtless portray Rush as a victim - a man whose post-surgery pain forced him to take narcotics, which, in turn, enslaved this heroic man. Critics will see Limbaugh as no different from any other junkie - turning to narcotics not for pain relief, but for those forbidden joys that only opiates can confer - joys that people have chased ever since discovering the Opium Poppy eons ago.
But while this fight rages, a bigger point will be missed. Mr. Limbaugh has allegedly been taking massive doses of narcotics - thousands of pills a month. How come he’s been able to run his radio empire and maintain his keen-edged performance?
The drug-warriors constantly paint a picture of the junkie as an unemployed, unemployable, outcast - filthy and degraded. Does this sound like Rush Limbaugh to you?
The fact is that narcotic addicts can - if adequately supplied with their drugs - lead perfectly productive lives. One of America’s foremost surgeons was a hopeless morphine addict who - so long as he had his drugs - performed flawlessly, and contributed mightily to American medicine. In various European countries addicts have been supplied with clean narcotics, and have lived quite boringly normal lives.
Mr. Limbaugh’s money and power made it possible for him to feed his addiction with pharmaceutical-grade narcotics. The poor amongst us must make do with filthy heroin and dirty syringes. To get the same rush as Rush, they pay inflated prices, suffer festering abscesses and risk deadly overdoses.
Because of his position, Mr. Limbaugh will not go to jail no matter what the outcome of this investigation. Nor should he.
Addiction should be treated as the medical problem it is. It makes as much sense to incarcerate someone for narcotic addiction as for congestive heart failure. But the same compassion we show to Limbaugh should be granted to the poor among us.
Jay Davis is a somewhat retired physician.
Anyone who advocates what he did should suffer some consequences of his own devising before being given any compassion.
People should not go around demanding blood if they're not willing to shed some of their own. It's the height of hypocrisy for "get tough" conservatives to demand clemency for themeselves, when they're out demanding draconian punishments for everyone.
This knee-jerk liberal reaction to demand clemency for Rush makes me queasy. Let's have some righteous indignation, and finger the hypocrite. Hang him high.
As individuals, we have a responsibility to apply the Golden Rule when we demand justice. We should not ask more punishment for crimes than we, ourselves, beleve we deserve to suffer if we commit those same crimes. Justice isn't supposed to be selective; it should apply equally to all. In this situation, the justice Rush cried out for is the justice that's being meted out to brown and black kids daily -- they're being busted and send to jail. Rush should be tossed into a jail and left to detox himself for a week. Let him crap his pants a little.
Maybe, one of these days, the justice I'd like to see -- clemency for drug addicts -- will come about. Until that day, though, let's let Rush eat some crow. Maybe food will take his mind off the oxycodone.
This whole Rash Lowbrow thing is throwing the right wing nutzo's for a loop. It is not the fact Rash is a drug addict. It's the fact the entire War on Drugs is a total falsehood. If little annie coulter can write that the War on Poverty is a total failure after all the money we spent on it,then the War on Drugs(a cheap labor conservative philosophic cornerstone) is also a tremendous failure after all the money the US has spent on it. Especially when Rash not only becomes addicted, but, skewering another cheap labor conservative credo for "personal responsibility" didn't even go out and get the drugs himself, but sent his housekeeper. Jeez what a pimp.