Let's set something straight

No it isn't. On the contrary, people who use drugs RESPONSIBLY have every right to complain about the minority who use them in an addictive, irresponsible manner, because THEY are the ones who keep drugs stigmatized and illegal for the majority of users who DON'T end up strung out and fucked up.

In the case of Rush, his drug addiction didn't seem to be effecting his job performance in any dramatic way. Even with his "hillbilly heroin" habit, he was still every bit as much of a pompous, overblown asshole as he always was. But did this fact show Rush the light, and make him realise that even heavily addicted drug users can hold jobs and contribute something (even something as vile as his radio program is) to society? OF COURSE NOT. He went on vociferously condemning the very behavior he was engaging in, and calling for OTHERS who use drugs (addicted or not) to be locked away in gulags. This is the very DEFINITION of hypocrisy.

 

On top of that, we don't criticize his drug addiction in itself quite so much as the fact that it makes him such a hypocrite about drugs, being addicted to drugs himself while strongly supporting tough drug laws.

 

that doesn't make him a hypocrite, really. it makes him a person reacting inappropriately to something very serious that he went through.

 

i need to elaborate on my point there. when i was coming out of my drug addiction days (which i'll argue to this day wasn't really an addiction, but getting there) my boyfriend whom i loved dearly was still spiraling downward. finally, one night, he ended up in jail. i was so furious with him that i was GLAD. i was so sick and tired wonding what the hell was going on with him and where he was, whether he was dead or alive. well, they let him out. i was so furious i wanted to burn something down. he was caught again, and ended up in jail again, this time because he'd had a seizure behind the wheel of his car, overdose, and had a small wreck. i couldn't understand what was going on . i decided the best place for him was SOME SORT OF JAIL. since the ridiculous rehab places that were any good cost so much money, then jail would do just as well. and this was a person i loved more than life for 8 years of my young life.


so, like i said, it doesn't necessarily make him a hypocrite, rather more a person reacting with anger and helpless, knowing rage at the ulelessness of trying to rehabilitate people who don't want it. if you can't rehabilitate someone, punish them instead.

 

Im sorry for the personal difficulties you have endured in your life kc, but it seems that you are incapable or at least unwilling to call a spade a spade. Limbaugh has spent years viciously deriding drug users as the scum of the earth and in need of purging from society in the most authoritarian manner possible. Then the facade is stripped from his own drug addicition and it's "poor Rush" this and "unfortunate Rush" that from his adoring fans. Sorry but the man and all his ilk with their neo fascist dream for society and their routine denegration of the basic principles of civil liberty are INDEED hypocrites.

He deserves nothing less than the same measure according to which they have spent years publically imposing their judgement on others. Perhaps a few high profile right wing examples might stop the mouths of the rest of the bigotted authoritarian pundits filling America's airwaves every hour of every day.

 

it's not that i still feel this way, hence the word "inappropriate." but in the heat of my anger, this IS how i felt. i still don't think the word for it is hypocritical. i feel a great deal of pity for ANYONE who becomes addicted to drugs and can't see their way out, this includes rush limbaugh. whatever his stance on how to deal with drug addicts, it's not my stance, and therefore i won't even apply it to him out of some misplaced sense of vengeance and "see! how do you like it?!" his adoring fans can kiss my shiney hiney, i don't give a crap about their feelings, i mean, can they be all the bright when they adore a man who calls powerful women "feminazis?" and resorts to name-calling and insults? that's just childish.

 

Nevertheless, Hypocrisy is hypocrisy and claiming all drug users should be locked up, as Rush has done for years, whilst being himself a drug addict IS hypocrisy.

If you have trouble with the definition of the term here it is for you:

Hy`poc´ri`sy Pronunciation: hĭ`pǒk´rĭ`sŷ
n.1.The act or practice of a hypocrite; a feigning to be what one is not, or to feel what one does not feel; a dissimulation, or a concealment of one's real character, disposition, or motives; especially, the assuming of false appearance of virtue or religion; a simulation of goodness.



By setting himself up on national radio to fire up his listeners with feigned righteous indignation and condemnation for what he himself was guilty of, is nothing less than HYPOCRISY! Simple as.

This has nothing to do with what YOU might feel he deserves. The application of the term pertains to Rush and his own brand of unjustifiable demagoguery.

 

there's no need to get fired up, i agree that his views were wrong. but i think there's a difference between proclaiming what you may actually feel to be the best and most sensible course and having the strength to follow through with it. i don't think that is hypocrisy, i think it's poor reasoning and cowardice. i'm not going to say that rush deserves imprisonment just because he declared that to be his viewpoint UNTIL it came to him. if anything i considered the whole thing to be a rude awakening for rush AND his following, and that's enough for me.

 

I just find more entertaining. He knows how to tell a story whether its fact or fiction. But making remarks about undesirable appearance really is not to be taken seriously. And shows a lack of imagination.

 

LickHERish, I think you missed KC's point. Rush denounced the kind of drug users who really are the scum of the Earth - the ones who sell to kids to support their own habit, rob stores for cash to buy crack, commit crimes etc. etc. You know, the ones who can't be rehabilitaed because they can't. Some people just won't change. In coming out, openly admitting he has a problem and allowing himself to be rehabilitated (unlike the drug users who he denounced), dosen't make him a hypocrite. Sure, he's an asshole with poor judgement for taking such a stance in the first place, but that's his right.

 

No, Rush had a longstanding tradition of ragging on ALL drug users, not just those who use crime to support their habits. When Jerry Garcia died, Rush launched into a vitriolic condemnation of Garcia's drug use, and I don't remember Jerry knocking off convenience stores or prostituting kids to buy his drugs.

BTW, if drugs were LEGAL, they would be much cheaper and more easily available, so addicts wouldn't NEED to resort to crime to support their habits. You don't see cigarette fiends mugging old ladies in the park, now do you? Does Rush support legalization as a PROVEN method to reduce crime caused by drug addiction? Of course he doesn't. He's a hypocritical douchebag.....

 

Hahah....

Yes, he is certainly a douche bag.

I used to listen to his show for entertainment purposes. Now, I can't even stomach the garbage he churns out. All he ever does is defend Bush and the GOP.

Hell, at least the other conservative talk-show hosts have a mind of their own (or at least somewhat).

 

no, max, that wasn't really my point. my main point was that i wasn't going to call rush a hypocrite for denouncing all drug users. i'm sure he truly felt that way about all drug users. but then it was HIS turn. time to ask for some of that mercy he so often found himself unwilling to give. i think his main sin there was arrogance, not that deliberate hypocrisy.

 

oh, yeah, and my second point being that i'm not going to change my opinion on how an addict should be treated just because said addict is rush limbaugh, asshole extraordinary.

 

Bah, fine. I only listened to his show a few times anyway.

That's debatable, as crack and heroin are a tiny bit different from cigarettes. No one ever has hallucinations or DT's from nicotine withdrawal. The stuff would fly off shelves so fast that prices would have to increace, that's supply and demand. Plus, what's to stop Big Cocaine, Big PCP, or any other drug company (as in "drug" company, not drug company. You get it.) from putting stuff into the drugs that makes them more addictive or more anything else. Hell, look at what goes into cigarretes these days. Legalize drugs, and in a year the actual ingredients of what we call "cocaine" today will be much different than what "cocaine" will be once corporations engineer it for maximum profit. Marijuana should be legalized, there's no problem with that, but I think the "harder" drugs should remain illegal.

 

You're right. Nicotine is MORE addictive, according to most experts. I've talked to former junkies that said that giving up heroin was easier than giving up cigs.

Nope, but they certainly do from ALCOHOL withdrawl. In case you haven't noticed, Alcohol is a LEGAL drug.

Do you REALLY believe that there are huge numbers of people out there who are just waiting for the stuff to become legal, so they can go out and start shooting smack?

Besides, the laws of "economies of scale" would tend to balance out the laws of supply and demand, and would tend to moderate prices. Of course, if the stuff was treated like cigs or booze, the govt. TAXES on the stuff would be far more than the actual price of the drug, anyway.

The same things that prevent booze sellers from cutting whiskey with antifreeze, or cigarette sellers from putting opium in the Marlboros. They're called LICENSING and REGULATIONS.

 

quitting coke and meth was SO MUCH EASIER than quitting caffeine and nicotine. either way, i'm putting murderous pollutants in my body, it's just the second set takes longer.

 

Bah. Curse you and curse you drug knowledge. May you never again find matching socks when such is required.

Well then, if all drugs were legalized then I see no reason why cigarretes couldn't be laced with opium or crack. I mean, if you can smoke crack out of a pipe legally then there should be no problem with putting the stuff into cigarretes right? The reason I'm not crazy about legalization of all drugs (besides pot, which is relatively harmless) isn't because of what we do know, it's the stuff that can't be predicted. I don't think that as of right now any modernized nation has a policy of general acceptance of all drugs, so there's no example to go by. How would all the drug related accidents (let's face it, there are bound to be a lot more of them if we legalize everything) affect daily life? Would hospitals have more patients to take care of in addition to already being under staffed and over streatched? How heavily would they affect things as unimportant as car insurance premiums/rates? And these are just off the top of my head, I'm sure if you sat down and thought about it you could come up with a lot more.

And what about prescription drugs, should we legalize them too? That would throw off a lot of what we have now. I mean, I'd be as happy as the next guy to be able to buy Viagra off of a store shelf, but you'd have regular people popping anti-depression meds like Asprin, and using unnecessarily powerful stuff for everyday problems. And it would mean that a lot of doctors would become unessential as well, since people could just browse through an Online Guide to Medication instead of going to a doctor, or they could just buy whatever they want based on their symptoms.

Basically, what I'm saying is that it's a lot more complicated then "legalize all drugs and be happy." There would have to be serious studies undertaken in order to confidently say that the pros outweigh the cons. Plus, Joe America isn't as open minded as people on the Hip Forums are. We've been led our whole lives to believe that drugs are evil and bad, and now we're supposed to embrae legalization of everything? Way too much change too fast for most Americans.

 

I'm pretty cynical of the whole idea of prohibition... but with some of the really hard drugs it's a grey area for me.

I think that marijuana and some psychedelics are just fine to legalize without any real qualms. I don't know about narcotics and stuff like heroin though, and meth is one scary drug, I don't mind that stuff being illegal.

I think the main question is whether the status quo of prohibition really is that effective or not, and is worth all the trouble. In most cases I say the answer is no. Do you really think that there would be such a huge opening-the-floodgates effect as you predict? The reality is that most drugs are pretty accessible to anyone that's willing to look for it, and is willing to dredge up the cash. I think people who aren't into drugs already are wary enough of hard drugs that there wouldn't suddenly be a massive wave of coke binging and overdosing across the nation, little more than there already is. One massive pro that you should also take into account would be the vicious kick in the balls legalization would be to organized crime syndicates.

 

I really didn't mean to imply that there would be a massive "opening of the floodgates" as you put it, just that there will be a lot of effects (positive and negative) that we can't predict. That's the case with any major change really. Yes it would put the Paulo Escabar's out of business, but it would put corporate suits and lobbies into business, and that's not something I'm crazy about. I'd much rather trust Kenny from down the block to hook me up with a fix than I would Big Heoin. If it's legalized, the composition of drugs will change. There'll be nicotine in your crack, crack in your nocotine, and plenty of other stuff that I can't pronounce in everything. It's the nature of corporations.

You say that drugs are readily available to anyone willing to look, but I don't think that's the case outside big cities. Let's say Suzie Soccermom is ignorant on the subject and never had any plans to ever do drugs, but one day at the pharmacy saw a bright, colorful, harmless-looking box (or jar or conainer, whatever) of heroin. She decides why not, right? Now I'm not trying to say it's the government's job to say what Ms. Soccermom can or can't do with her body, I'm just using it as a believable example of someone who never had any inkling of doing drugs becoming a junkie once they were legalized. I'm sure here would be a lot of cases like that. No "floodgate" (probably anyway) per se, but I'm sure there would be plenty of issues that would arise as a result of drug legalization (my hospital and car insurance examples, for example).