SubscribeWalsh does a compelling and thorough job of showing examples of two white, middle-class peopleWhy do you think they're white?
Imagine if there were similarly ridiculous laws that resulted in the incarceration of black, lower-class people. Liberals would go crazy about it.You really ought to adjust your irony meter.
• Congress has enacted 452 new crimes over the eight-year period between 2000 and 2007——a rate of about 57 new crimes per year——for a total of 4,450 federal crimes in the U.S. Code.Paper Here.
• This growth rate is basically unchanged from the rates that prevailed during the 1980s and 1990s, despite that the growth of the federal criminal law has come under increasing scrutiny in recent years.
• Election politics may be driving the growth of the federal criminal law. The data show that Congress creates more criminal offenses in election years.
• Troublingly, many new crimes lack a mens rea requirement, a traditional element that protects those who did not intend to commit wrongful acts from prosecution and conviction
• The trend of “overcriminalization” continues unabated as Congress subjects more and more activities to criminal sanction and weakens the role of mens rea. In the process, the criminal law’s power as a system of moral education and socialization is diminished.
1) And, here's Mother Jones supporting the DEA against Purdue.Okay, so that's one. None of those, by the way, have any mention of evil doctors addicting patients. And the New York Times is neither a magazine (which is nitpicking, sure) nor is it liberal (which is not: I "might say" that because it's true, and the fact that it isn't socially conservative or libertarian doesn't make it liberal or relevant to your point, not even by implication), and what Barry Meier wrote is irrelevant.
Actually, the article says nothing about the DEA. Were they behind the case? But okay, leaving aside the actual merits of the civil case, you're right, Corn is certainly more concerned with Purdue Pharma's marketing than the potential for Oxycontin to aid chronic pain sufferers.
2) Here's the Nation, attacking it more obliquely by railing against Giuliani for representing them.
In other words, Ari Berman doesn't attack Purdue at all in that blog post and it has nothing whatsoever to do with evil drug companies turning innocent patients into junkies. There is a brief mention of Oxycontin, and Berman mentions that Oxycontin has become popular as a recreational drug, which you yourself agree is true ("people started to defeat the time-release mechanism to get high").
3) Here's Washington Monthly
Wow, you read that summary (and presumably the Washington Post article linked to in the brief blog post) and you weren't bothered by Purdue Pharma's attempt to make an end-run around the legal system by whispering into the ear of the Deputy Attorney General? But leave that aside, that blog post has nothing to do with "evil ... drug companies ... turning innocent patients into junkies". It has to do with an evil drug company subverting the rule of law. And the context for that blog post was not Oxycontin or Purdue Pharma, it was the politically motivated firings of attorneys that Rove had a hand in.
1) Liberal magazines haven't published any articles decrying the arrests of doctors who have been deemed to overprescribe opioid painkillers, or at least not until "Reason covered this". I assume that you're using the August/September 2004 date on your article as the starting date after which articles won't count (because you're claiming that the "liberal magazines" wouldn't print such an article when you were trying to shop your story, but came around at some later point. Note that you do not limit yourself to Oxycontin, but you do express a belief that any such article would have to include a reference to Oxycontin.You've provided no proof for 2) at all. You've started to provide proof for 3), but have only given a single example which attacks one company. Frankly, the fact that liberal magazines and their writers attack Purdue Pharma isn't proof that they reflexively do so because they're biased towards the DEA's point of view. It could be because Purdue Pharma are a bunch of sleazebags.
2) Liberal magazines are, at this moment, more concerned about doctors, whom they depict as "evil", who are turning "innocent patients into junkies" than the issue in 1) above.
3) Liberal magazines are, at this moment, more concerned about drug companies who are turning "innocent patients into junkies" than the issue in 1) above. Note that you used the plural companies, which you now seem to be backing away from in an attempt to focus all attention on a single company: Oxycontin's manufacturer, Purdue Pharma.
Unquestionably, people who take a narcotic for a long period will become physically dependent on the drug. But researchers have learned that dependence is not the same biological phenomenon as addiction. Most patients don't become addicts that easily, perhaps because they lack the addictive body chemistry, perhaps because they take the drugs in a social setting different from that of illicit users. "When addicts use drugs, they become less functional, more isolated, and they move away from the mainstream," says Dr. Richard Patt of the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center of Houston. "When pain patients use drugs, they become more functional, much less isolated, and they move toward the mainstream." And when they no longer need the drugs, Patt says, they have, almost without exception, no difficulty gradually eliminating their intake.Losing your license isn't nearly as bad as getting arrested and charged by the feds, but it's still pretty bad. Of course, if you make a fetish of "federalism" and "states' rights", as many libertarians do, there really isn't any ground to complain about the treatment of overprescribing doctors by state medical boards.
That doesn't mean a doctor can prescribe narcotics with impunity. For one thing, this can be hazardous to one's career. Medical-review boards in some states, notably Tennessee, West Virginia and New York, are notorious for singling out physicians who prescribe a lot of narcotics and yanking their licenses. "I tend to underprescribe instead of using stronger drugs that could really help my patients," a West Virginia doctor admits. "I can't afford to lose my ability to support my family."
A physician who nearly did lose her license is Dr. Katherine Hoover, formerly of Key West, Florida. In December 1993, Hoover got into trouble with Florida authorities because she had treated the chronic pain of seven of her 15,000 patients with narcotics. A pain specialist testified at her 1995 hearing that she was practicing within accepted guidelines. But the review board censured her anyway--a decision that was reversed on appeal. Says Hoover, who now practices in West Virginia: "There is a belief that anyone who prescribes narcotics is a bad doctor."
Some in the medical community call it "a war on pain doctors," others "a government jihad" or "state-sponsored terrorism." However you describe the current campaign, which according to pain-patient advocates began under Janet Reno, but which they say has increased in intensity under John Ashcroft, the DEA's hardball tactics—storming clinics in SWAT-style gear, ransacking offices, and hauling off doctors in handcuffs—have scared physicians nationwide to the extent that legitimate pain sufferers now find it increasingly difficult to get the medicine they need.I'm not a freelance writer, so I have no idea why magazines decide to take a pass on certain articles. It might have been because other issues (the Iraq war comes to mind) were taking up a lot of people's attention at the time.
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