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I think the reason this has received such attention from HN isn't the sympathy it could garner (there isn't much), but rather the empathy. Only a small minority of HN can truly identify with those who are in intractable pain; they can understand their plight, but they don't feel it themselves. But when thinking about someone with a great job who was "on their way to the top" making one bad (and harmless!) decision, and then losing everything they had worked for because of it, and having to start from scratch with a nearly-indelible black mark on their record--well, I can imagine the mirror neurons of a lot of HNers are firing at that pain.

I feel like more insight is being generated by those comments that point out how correlated this guy's personal judgement and financial advisory performance is likely to be.

Also: he got the conviction expunged. The people with "nearly indelible black marks" don't have that option.

I don't understand why you feel his work ability is at all correlated with this. It seems to me I hear the same narrative frequently with American politicians: "Clinton's sexual misconduct means he's bound to be a bad president," etc.

This goes to the concept of "character," which I honestly don't understand. Why do we insist that people be flawless in all aspects of their lives? I find history to be full of examples of people who excel at one trait but are terrible at another.

Doesn't he get a private life, uncorrelated with work? I mean, I'd understand it if the article pointed out he was a heavy drug user who needed to steal for a habit, but the only thing this guy seems to have done wrong was handle stupid laws in a poor way. Does that stop him dealing with stocks? I don't think the two correlate, and I think people ought to have to make more significant mistakes before its time to discard them.

I guess what I feel here is this could be anyone, and I'm uncomfortable with such a punishment for a small error.

"In other words, he got off a lot easier than a 19 year old carrying a bag of weed would on the West Side of Chicago."

Proud to say that Chicago has de-criminalized small amounts of Marijuana. (http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-06-28/news/ct-met-ch...)

Marijuana law in Chicago remains a tool by which the police can arbitrarily take people off the streets. Dealing weed remains a felony. The thresholds at which possession becomes intent remain arbitrary.

I am sympathetic to the police here (there are probably many very good public policy reasons to get West Side dealers off the street) but the law itself is a bit of a clusterfuck.

>>>He did straight-up break the law, deliberately. He was carrying around recreational narcotics.

One pill. Have a sense of proportion. And go read Les Miserables. You are being Javert.

I feel like you're not seeing the comparison I'm drawing here.

The doctors who are being screwed over by our drug laws aren't breaking the law. They are the victims of an error prone and occasionally capricious effort to suppress illegal narcotics dealing by unscrupulous doctors.

This guy did break the law, did it knowingly, and got caught in part because he displayed poor judgement in dealing with the police and prosecutors.

I am not saying "do not have sympathy for this guy". I'm saying, "meter that sympathy out in comparison to people who have truly been ruined by capricious drug laws".

This comment is pure misanthropy. Some of the people expressing their concern in this thread are THE VERY SAME PEOPLE YOU SCOLD US FOR NOT PAYING ATTENTION TO. You're telling the victims of drug prohibition to not feel bad for other victims of drug prohibition. You are a hateful person.

There are much more sympathetic stories about people's lives being ruined by drug laws.

May be. But those stories don't make this story "light". He still had his life destroyed, for what? Some lame laws, and some inefficiency in the system?

Even the article points out that his life was not destroyed.

In the headline.

>He did straight-up break the law, deliberately

There are so many laws on the books this is virtually guaranteed to be true of everyone on this site.

Give me a break. Carrying around one of the most famously illegal prescription narcotics is not the same as "the 502 and 1/2 federal felonies you can commit while making orange juice for yourself in the morning".

Am I violating some federal law somehow as we speak? Perhaps, but I am not aware of which one. This guy was fully aware of what he was doing.

Did you ever drink alcohol before turning 21? That would probably be a roughly analogous crime (along with ridiculous enforcement and penalties), when considering the harm and risks involved to the user. It's not punished as severely, but it's definitely a much more well-known offense.

I actually hadn't known the legal status of oxytocin, though I was familiar with it from all the studies about it being related to people's natural production of it. I have been out of the US for a long time and I don't exactly know any of the raver-type people, but it's not (or at least wasn't) a famously abused prescription drug like valium, ritalin or adderall.

Edit since HN won't let me reply: Good point. I hadn't realized you were restricting your "he broke the law" point to felonies. I suppose sharing a drink with a 20 year-old (still very common) would be a better comparison in terms of punishment then. I have read articles about parents allowing their teens to drink at home safely instead of going out getting jail time for this.

Drinking alcohol before you are 21 is not a felony. So, no, not remotely analogous.

Oxy is more or less prescription heroin. It is at the heart of the illegal prescription drug trade, in a way that valium, ritalin, and adderall are not. Oxy is not comparable to adderall or valium. It has a far, far higher abuse potential.

> Oxy is more or less prescription heroin.

So what? There's nothing particularly dangerous about prescription heroin in pill form. It's an excellent cough suppressant and pain reliever. And certainly there's nothing particularly dangerous about possessing one pill of it. (I'd actually be a bit surprised if you couldn't find a leftover pill or two of, say, hydrocodone in the average medicine chest.)

Given that you say you don't like the drug laws, I don't get your apparently fanatical devotion to obeying these laws that you don't like and that obviously don't serve their allegedly intended use either in general or in this specific instance.

I'm guessing you think this guy did take some oxy at the event he was at. If so: so what? Why do you care? Why does having possibly taken a drug (with no apparent ill effects) make him unsympathetic to you?

Remember, we've got a president who admits to having done cocaine and pot. Surely you'll grant that taking a prescription pill is safer than doing cocaine obtained from a nonmedical source?

>>>Carrying around one of the most famously illegal prescription narcotics

Rush Limbaugh did much, much worse and how has he suffered? This guy had one freaking pill and that he was dumb and agreed to let the cops search him -- as everyday Americans submit to even worse searches by TSA -- is justification for what he went through?

Rush Limbaugh (who, just to be clear, I find odious in the extreme) was prosecuted, plead not guilty, and had his charges dropped only after paying $30,000 and agreeing to 18 months of addiction therapy.

The person in this story was prosecuted, plead guilty, and had his record expunged after agreeing to 12 months of addiction therapy.

No amount of prosecutorial discretion was ever going to equalize outcomes between a young Merrill broker in Florida and Rush Limbaugh, one of the richest blowhards in right wing media.

>>>and had his record expunged after agreeing to 12 months of addiction therapy

And yet he cannot get it expunged from all the companies that got that info from the state. It will forever haunt him. For One. Freakin. Pill.

Orthogonal and legitimate issue.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/17/us/17expunge.html?pagewant...

"In other words, he got off a lot easier than a 19 year old carrying a bag of weed would on the West Side of Chicago."

As a person who was truly in the wrong place as the wrong time, I agree with this statement. A seemingly good call could turn into a bad call instantly.

By what logic is an oxytocin pill in this context considered "recreational narcotics"? It's a pain pill. A drug that is legal to prescribe and probably was legally prescribed to somebody. Even if some nitwit bureaucrat defines possessing that pill without a prescription as illegal, what logic lets you determine he was breaking that law "deliberately" as opposed to, say, "ignorantly"?

The fact that he consented to search tends to argue otherwise.

"He was carrying around recreational narcotics."

That wording, including the use of present participle ('carrying') and plural-like word ('narcotics'), makes it sound like this was an ongoing activity with multiple doses.

He had one pill in his pocket. His story, that he'd just received it at the concert from which he was returning, with no intent for or history of use, is plausible. (Even if we assume he's shaded the story to make himself look better, the prosecution and damage to his livelihood was not based on any other evidence.)

Most people will not find someone completely unsympathetic as soon as they "straight-up break the law", especially if the discussion is about the law itself. The point of the article isn't that 'James' is innocent, but that the punishment is disproportionate, and (via the details of the required classes) often absurdly wasteful and mistargeted.

The fact that there may be other even more sympathetic stories doesn't weaken this one. Their stories are additive in the case against the drug war, not competing with each other for a rationed amount of available sympathy.

For example, some people are going to figure a licensed professional doctor in trouble for suspect prescriptions should have known better (and received a strong defense at trial). But, hearing about James' naive errors -- holding a single pill, consenting to the car search, relying on his lawyer and probation officer -- they may recognize mistakes they might themselves make, and sympathize more deeply.

Since I think drug laws are bad, I find it easy to agree that any punishment, no matter how lenient, is disproportionate to the offense.

You've said "drug laws are bad" at least two or three times, so I feel you must want a response...

Drug laws are not bad. The current state of drug laws in the states, however, is appalling. I believe, for instance, that some substances should always be strictly controlled / banned like Heroine or Cocaine for instance.

I believe Marijuana should be legal (at the VERY least, decriminalized) and treated similarly to alcohol and tobacco.

Psychedelics are clearly a gray area, they seem harmful but really not enough research has been done. Creative breakthroughs aside, I'm not really sure how addictive or destructive they are.

In summary, drug laws are not bad in general; they are just bad at the moment, in the U.S. specifically. It's just such a shame that democracy doesn't lend itself to perceived criminal leniency.

No politician looking to get elected is going to advocate taking it easier on criminals even if those criminals he wants to be easier on shouldn't even be criminals in the first place.

I blame Nixon. /endrant

You're wrong. Drug laws are bad in general.

Do a little research and you'll find that even for heroin and cocaine the harm done to society by their being illegal far exceeds any conceivable harm done by the drugs themselves. When and where cocaine has been legal, people drank tea from the leaves as a mild stimulant similar to caffeine. When heroin was legal people took it in pill form and addiction was safe and affordable - the main long-term documented negative effect of regular heroin use is constipation. Many people have lived a long and healthy and productive life addicted to these drugs in exactly the same way I've lived one nearly continuously addicted to caffeine (in my case, preferably administered in the form of Diet Coke - your tastes may vary).

When alcohol was illegal, whiskey was cheaper than beer and people went blind drinking wood alcohol; when alcohol was legal again the average potency of what was fashionable to drink declined. That same dynamic applies to every other drug - making a drug illegal makes a more potent, more dangerous product available where leaving it legal lets people use it far more safely - an outcome you can only be opposed to if you carry some sort of Victorian anti-fun meme or if you're convinced that everybody in the world is insane, untrustworthy and lacking in judgment except the angels we've found to regulate the rest of us.

I recommend the book Licit and Illicit drugs, which you can read for free here:

http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/library/studies/cu/cumen...

You could also just look up any of the drugs you're worried about in an old-fashioned paper encyclopedia.

Thanks for the link, I'll look into it.