RUSHING TO A SANE DRUG POLICY

Memo to Rush Limbaugh: Hey, Rush, we're counting on you, pal. Now that you
might be feeling the hot breath of drug prosecutors on your neck, perhaps you
might speak out for more enlightened treatment of non-violent drug offenders.

News reports say that Limbaugh is facing an investigation by the Palm
Beach County state attorney's office in Florida for allegedly buying
thousands of tablets of the powerful painkiller OxyContin and other
highly addictive prescription drugs from an illegal ring in Florida
between 1998 and 2002. Mike Edmondson, a spokesman for the state
attorney's office, told The Associated Press last week that his office
could neither confirm nor deny that an investigation was under way.

Limbaugh issued a three-sentence statement on his Web site saying that
he was "unaware of any investigations by any authorities involving
me." He also promised to cooperate fully " if my assistance is
required in the future."

Drug addiction is a disease. It respects no particular race, gender or
political leaning. If someone has an addiction problem and he or she
hasn't hurt anybody with it, I think treatment will do the drug user
and society a lot more good than throwing the person into the slammer.

And I am not alone. Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the
non-profit Drug Policy Alliance, said in a news release that someone
who was convicted of non-violent drug use "should not face
incarceration or otherwise be punished for what he chooses to put into
his own body."

The alliance, it is worth noting, showed similar sympathies to former
drug czar William J. Bennett when he announced in May that he will no
longer gamble, following news reports that said the Republican Party's
high priest of virtues had lost millions over the last decade.

Bennett has always called for tough punitive measures against those
convicted of drug use, even against low-level marijuana users. But, as
for his own favorite addiction, Bennett pointed out rather meekly that
he never said anything in public about gambling.

The alliance also supported Florida Gov. Jeb Bush's call for respect
and privacy regarding the arrest of his 26-year-old daughter, Noelle,
for trying to buy Xanax without a prescription in 2002. Happily,
Noelle completed treatment in August and a judge allowed her to go
home to her parents.

Unhappily, the same cannot be said for a lot of non-violent Florida
drug offenders who have less money or political power. Instead, Gov.
Bush has cut drug-treatment and drug-court budgets. He also flatly
opposes a possible ballot initiative like the one California passed a
few years ago that would divert non-violent drug offenders away from
prison and into treatment programs.

As for you, Rush, you deserve to be presumed innocent until proven
otherwise, like anyone else.

However this turns out, I cannot help but hope that this experience
has a chastening effect on your drug views. Your past political
commentaries offer a ray of hope. Online searches of your past views
reveal a Limbaugh who seems, uncharacteristically, to have wavered on
the drug issue between the libertarian and authoritarian wings of the
conservative movement.

On Oct. 5, 1995, you insisted on your now-defunct TV show that "if
people are violating the law by doing drugs, they ought to be accused
and they ought to be convicted and they ought to be sent up."

You also said, with tongue at least partly in cheek, that the
statistics that show blacks go to prison far more often than whites
for the same drug offenses only show that "too many whites are getting
away with drug use."

"The answer to this disparity," you said, "is not to start letting
people out of jail ... 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."

Ah, yes. Those words may come back to haunt you. I guess I am doing my
part.

However, Newsday columnist Ellis Henican and the pro-drug reform Media
Awareness Project's Web site (MAPinc.org) cite a March 1998 radio show
in which you, Rush, advocated legalization of addictive drugs the way
we regulate cigarettes and alcohol. "License the Cali [the drug cartel
in Cali, Colombia] cartel," you reportedly said. "Make them taxpayers
and then sue them. Sue them left and right and then get control of the
price and generate tax revenue from it. Raise the price sky high and
fund all sorts of other wonderful social programs."

I remember when former Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke, a former drug
prosecutor, advocated that very same idea after seeing how much the
war against drugs had become a war against drug victims.

I don't remember hearing you say much about that at the time, Rush. If
ever there was a time for you to speak out more (And I never thought I
would ever be saying that about you!), this could be it.