Here’s Rush Limbaugh on the FDA’s much-ridiculed April 20th statement on medical marijuana:

“The FDA says there’s no — zilch, zero, nada — shred of medicinal value to the evil weed marijuana. This is going to be a setback to the long-haired, maggot-infested, dope-smoking crowd.”

Here’s Will Saletan at Slate on Rush Limbaugh’s settlement last week on criminal charges of illegally obtaining prescription painkillers:

He got four doctors to prescribe a total of 2,000 painkilling pills in six months. The plea deal: He’ll be charged with fraud to conceal information to obtain a prescription, but the charge disappears in a year and a half if he sticks to treatment for his addiction. He’ll also pay Florida $30,000 for the cost of having investigated him.

I take no solace in Limbaughs’ drug woes. I think it’s more of a missed opportunity. None of us knows what exactly happened with respect to his painkiller problem, but my hunch is that like a lot of people, Limbaugh mistook physical dependence for addiction. And because Florida law wouldn’t let him legally obtain the medication he needed at the doses he needed it, he had to circumvent the law to find relief.

Physical dependence isn’t harmful. Diabetics are physically dependent on insulin. Asthmatics are physically dependent on bronchodialators. All of us are physcially dependent on air and water. And chronic pain patients successfully undergoing opiate therapy are physically dependent on painkillers. Addiction, on the other hand, is harmful. It’s the dogged, destructive pursuit of euphoria. The two are distinct, and are too often confused by policymakers.

Put another way, people physically dependent on opiates need the drugs to live a normal life. Addicts, on the other hand, tend to destroy their lives in pursuit of euphoria. That Limbaugh continued an enormously successful and demanding radio show throughout his alleged “addiction” suggests he was dependent, not addicted, and that he’s probably in more pain than he needs to be now that he’s “clean.”

Limbaugh’s problems could have been an opportunity to educate the public about pain, opiate therapy, and the government’s problematic war on painkillers. Instead, Limbaugh toed the drug prohibition line. Not only did he roll over for prosecutors, he took a cheap shot at other sick people in the process. His crude dismissal of the scores of AIDS, cancer, and chronic pain patients who have sought and found relief from medical marijuana wasn’t funny. It was foolish and hypocritical.

Given that Limbaugh’s transgression took place in Florida, it’s also difficult not to notice the discrepency in the way prosecutors in that state handled his case, and the way they handled the case of, for example, Richard Paey.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 1st, 2006 at 1:13 pm by Radley Balko and is filed under Pain Treatment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.