So yeah, Rush Limbaugh has come out and admitted that the National Enquirer was correct, basically...

"You know I have always tried to be honest with you and open about my life," Limbaugh said on his program. "So I need to tell you today that part of what you have heard and read is correct. I am addicted to prescription pain medication."

(Some may be snickering already at the 'open and honest' stuff, remembering another embarrassing incident in Rush's private life. But isn't he going through enough right now?)

"I am no role model," the radio commentator said. "I refuse to let anyone think I am doing something great here ... I take full responsibility for my problem."

It's tempting to give Limbaugh credit for this statement--even if it's doubtful anyone actually thinks he's doing something great--but the fact of the matter is that it took a pending criminal investigation to get him to come clean. This will apparently be his third trip to rehab. This is also the guy who said:

"Too many whites are getting away with drug use. Too many whites are getting away with drug sales. Too many whites are getting away with trafficking in this stuff. The answer to this disparity is not to start letting people out of jail because we're not putting others in jail who are breaking the law. The answer is to go out and find the ones who are getting away with it, convict them and send them up the river, too."

Oh, dear.

Limbaugh's problem, easy as it is to make fun of, is actually very widespread. Even as the Bush Administration ramps up the War on Drugs, with special emphasis on preventing the spread of tolerant attitudes about medical marijuana, it turns out that there are now over 9 million Americans who use prescription drugs for non-medical (often recreational) reasons. In the last seven years, there has been a 163% increase in emergency room visits tied to abuse of prescription drugs.

The most popular prescription drugs for abusers are pain killers, sedatives, and stimulants. As a consequence of the double standard Americans apply to psychotropic drugs, a person caught using illegal opiates might serve decades in prison while a person ordering codeine-laced painkillers through the mail might (but most probably wouldn't) hear from the Food and Drug Administration. Similarly, a person caught with illegal amphetamines would probably be facing serious jail time even as a person receiving prescription stimulants from Canada might be legally untouchable for all practical purposes. The greater availability of prescription drugs to ordinary Americans is commonly blamed on the Internet, where ads for cut-rate prescription drugs from other countries, notably Canada, are becoming ubiquitous.

The FDA isn't taking the matter lying down: the agency has been randomly opening mail from Canada and other nations to determine if prescription drugs being imported into America are dangerous. It has concluded that 90% of all such drugs are dangerous (because they were mislabeled, had dangerous side effects, required medical monitoring, etc.), and that 16% of these prescription drugs originate in Canada. Importers of prescription drugs think the FDA is full of it, and that the agency is just trying to make sure that American drug companies make the profits they are used to.

The two-faced nature of U.S. drug enforcement couldn't be any clearer: even as 54 million Americans had a drinking binge in the last month and 16 million Americans are addicted to alcohol; even as tobacco causes 10 million deaths per year, and even as millions of Americans become addicted to prescription drugs as strong as anything available on the black market, catching and imprisoning pot smokers is the War that has the government's full attention.

Maybe Limbaugh's bust will serve some higher purpose?