I am specifically not litigating the wastefulness, inefficiency, or injustice of our drug laws.
This is a problem I have in general with _Reason_ (and also with Radley Balko, who I also enjoy reading and often agree with, and whose writing introduced me to _Reason_). They have a bad habit of building emotional narratives around cases where the facts don't support them. As a result, every time I read one of these pieces, I find myself having to dig in to see where I'm being manipulated. Often, it turns out I'm not, and the piece is completely honest. But sometimes they're not.
This isn't a dishonest piece, just kind of a dumb one. Other stories about narcotics laws have turned out to be directly misleading: key facts of the case had been withheld to create an undue perception of victimhood, because victimhood suits the ideological agenda of the writer.
We don't know if he took drugs himself.
Was that mistake enough to warrant the results?
What have I gained from him going through that?
How sorry do you feel for the short order cooks with postgraduate degrees who weren't caught with Oxy?
This is simply not a story about someone who's life was ruined.
Losing your medical license and then going to prison at age 53 because your intractable pain practice was targeted by a sting operation and you were found one time to have not followed the absolute letter of the 3498739847 page law on how to prescribe vicodin to a cancer patient: that is a story about a ruined life. This isn't.
Arm amputated?
Stop crying and use your brain
You still have one left