SO THE NATIONAL Enquirer was right-Rush Limbaugh does have a drug problem. As you probably know by now, the archconservative radio personality has admitted having a painkiller addiction.

Though it may take a bit of self-discipline for some of us, we should resist any temptation to revel in Limbaugh's misfortune-or vilify him for his apparently illegal behavior (it seems inconceivable that he could have fed his habit without illegally obtaining the drugs). Like millions of Americans, Limbaugh has a serious health problem-a debilitating dependency on addictive substances.

Limbaugh's admission should be greeted as an opportunity to acknowledge a few truths: 1) drug abuse is primarily a public health problem; 2) the get-tough criminal-justice approach to the problem causes more harm than good; and 3) the war on drugs disproportionately targets those who don't fall into the same demographic as Limbaugh.

For years, while our prisons have filled to the point of overflowing with nonviolent drug offenders who tend to be poor and nonwhite, the right wing has gotten gobs of political mileage out of pushing a lock-'em-up-and-throw-away-the-key agenda.

Not surprisingly, Limbaugh has given (loud) voice to this zealotry. In the mid-1990s, he said: "There's nothing good about drug use. And we have laws against selling drugs, pushing drugs, using drugs, importing drugs. And the laws are good because we know what happens to people in societies and neighborhoods which become consumed by them. And so if people are violating the law by doing drugs, they ought to be accused and they ought to be convicted and they ought to be sent up."

Limbaugh went on to question the claim that too many people of color were being locked up on drug charges, but concluded that if that were the case, it simply meant that more white drug offenders had to be put behind bars, too.

Maybe now Limbaugh will want to reconsider his position. If so, he could start by digesting this information:

* Drug offenders make up nearly 60 percent of all federal inmates, according to The Sentencing Project, which advocates alternatives to the mandatory-minimum-sentencing laws that are filling up our prisons. The group also notes that there has been a thirteenfold increase in the number of drug offenders in state prisons since 1980, and that they now account for a fifth of all state prisoners.

* Most of the people who wind up in the slammer for drug offenses are small fish in the narcotics trade and generally have no prior record of committing violent crimes, The Sentencing Project reports.

* Three-fourths of all convicted drug offenders are people of color, a ratio vastly disproportionate to their share of drug users in society, according to The Sentencing Project.

If race and, to a large degree, class are major factors in determining who gets busted on drug charges, the laws themselves ensure that people will do time once convicted. Mandatory-minimum-sentencing laws, enacted in the mid-1980s as politicians fell over themselves proving they were tough on crime, guarantee that the prisons will fill up, but do little to get most drug addicts the help they need to kick their destructive habits.

Supreme Court Justices Anthony Kennedy, Stephen Breyer, and even the conservative William Rehnquist have questioned the wisdom of one-size-fits-all sentencing laws. But that exemplar of the moralistic right, Attorney General John Ashcroft, last month instructed federal prosecutors to rat out judges who depart from the government's rigid sentencing guidelines.

Ashcroft's opposition to greater sentencing flexibility makes certain that nonviolent drug offenders will continue to be dealt lengthy prison terms-and that will hurt lots of us in these tough times, because money spent warehousing convicts is money that won't be used to build schools, provide health care, or close yawning budget gaps.

Given the staggering cost of keeping so many Americans locked up ($30,000 a year, on average, for a state inmate), it should come as little surprise that 18 states and the District of Columbia have implemented reforms since the mid-1990s that offer more flexibility in sentencing and alternatives to incarceration.

We need to rethink not only mandatory-minimum sentences, but also a drug war that targets certain racial and income groups and approaches a public-health epidemic almost exclusively from a criminal-justice perspective. Limbaugh now is in a position to be a persuasive advocate of a more sensible strategy for combating our nation's drug problem. Here's hoping that he gets cleaned up-and that a sober Limbaugh becomes more susceptible to reason on the drug issue.

RICK MERCIER is a writer and editor for The Free Lance-Star.

Copyright 2003, The Free Lance-Star Publishing Co.

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