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A comment on How a Single Oxycontin Pill Nearly Ruined One Man's Life. Parent comment

Re:How a Single Oxycontin Pill Nearly Ruined One Man's Life by thaumaturgy on Monday August 06, 2012 @03:52PM (#4346938)
Fair enough, but those people weren't forced to work menial jobs because of stupid drug laws; they were forced to work menial laws because of a stupid economy. I get what you're saying -- that it's unfair to say his life was "nearly ruined" relative to all these other people -- but that really doesn't make this example of the unnecessary damage done to one individual's life by drug laws any less compelling. He had a promising career and future, and both were derailed by heaps of stupidity; it looks like he's recovering from all that, but there was a perfectly reasonable chance that he might not have. Why not leave it at that?

I think that you're understating the rest of his situation because it better suits your argument that his life wasn't ruined. For instance, yes, his record was expunged, however, as noted in the article, his record is still showing up in private background checks -- thanks in part to getting an extra year of probation after being charged with violating his probation because his PO told him it was OK to work late.

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Re:How a Single Oxycontin Pill Nearly Ruined One Man's Life by tptacek on Monday August 06, 2012 @04:12PM (#4347026)
About 10 years ago, I cancelled my account with Sprint and switched to AT&T. For 5 months afterwards, I was billed by Sprint, called Sprint, re-cancelled (orally and in writing) and watched the cycle complete. Eventually I gave up and said "fuck it". Sprint trashed my credit report.

Had I not been as fortunate as I have been, that trashed credit report easily could have cost me the most lucrative tier of jobs available to me, because employers routinely screen applicants based on credit history.

Being screwed over by Sprint is not a felony. Similar screwups have no doubt cost thousands of people jobs.

I'm not sure what the appropriate public policy response to this situation is. We benefit enormously from employment- at- will. There are people on HN who will also convincingly argue that we benefit enormously from credit reports and credit scoring (among other things, the system we had before credit scores was overtly racist). It's a complicated issue and I have no glib answers to provide.

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