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...