Yes, the War on Drugs is stupid. It has cost lots and lots of money, and for what? To put hundreds of thousands (more?) of people, who mostly only hurt themselves, in jail. Where we have to pay more to keep them locked up. And you know what? Drugs are still out there, plentiful and cheaper than they were before the war started. Has there been any benefit to this war, besides law enforcement agencies getting to confiscate and sell property of the accused?
In today's New York Times, John Tierney highlights a new absurdity of the war on drugs: arresting doctors who prescribe OxyContin. Is OxyContin a scourge?
The D.E.A. announced that in two years, there had been 464 OxyContin-related deaths, but most of the victims had taken other drugs, too, so the cause of death was uncertain. Ronald Libby, a political scientist at the University of North Florida, notes that even that figure is a minuscule fraction (0.00008 percent) of the number of OxyContin prescriptions written, and that it's dwarfed by the more than 32,000 people who die in the same period from gastrointestinal bleeding from other painkillers, like aspirin and ibuprofen.
But many doctors are now afraid to give painkillers to either kind of patient. The D.E.A. tried reassuring them by working with pain-management experts to produce a pamphlet setting out guidelines for doctors who want to avoid investigation. But last fall, the agency said it wasn't bound by the guidelines after all, and could investigate even when it had no reason to suspect a doctor.