Leaving aside the putatively liberal argument that mandatory minimums are racist, they strike me as more intimately tied to economic concerns. Neither the state nor private enterprise loses money as a result of rape; however, the drug trade would appear to keep money out of the pockets of both pharmaceutical companies (who, it seems, tend to charge a lot more for a lot less drug) and law enforcement agencies.

Lex, I'm assuming this will be the subject of one of the weekly columns. I will be very interested to see what kinds of figures you can turn up on this issue.

I personally feel a lot safer knowing that she was kept behind bars where she couldn't hurt anyone by selling them pain-killers!

I've given half a bottle of a left-over pain killer prescription to friend when they got in a MotorCross accident-hey, you know not everyone has insurance. Kinda scary.

I'm all for the legalisation of soft drugs, but moving into somehow 'legalising' diversion of prescription medications is not right.

Should clarify: I don't care what people take, but diverting prescription medications involves fraud and wastage in the health care system.

The injustices I've seen over the years in sentencing, both habitual slaps on the wrist in the past, and disgusting brutality in overreaction to that more recently, sometimes make me doubt the rule of law in America.

The War on Drugs is a hideous farce. Does anyone have a hard time finding something to get high on ?

But at least you can have up to an ounce of pot here and it's just a $100 fine. Clearly 28g of Percocet is a serious danger to the Commonwealth.

Please do return to this topic. There are so many people who should be imprison before drug users. Blog commenters, for example, are like roaches.

I seriously question the government's role in imprisoning citizens for victimless crimes.

Why should it be the role of the government to protect people from themselves?

I'd particularly like to hear an answer from the conservative viewpoint, which should theoretically prefer small-government, pro-liberty, pro-freedom, pro-individual rights, etc., but which instead tends to champion this particular flavor of nanny state.

Heimdall, I know you are being general and I'm being specific, but prescription abuse is not victimless. You have to consider the health care professionals who can be victimized in the process of illegally obtaining prescription narcotics, from general intimidation to actual armed robbery.

@Doug --

Here in Houston, our large and well-established roach community would be seriously offended by that comment.

Jer_X,

I would submit that the intimidation of health care professionals is a side effect of the law, not of the drugs.

I disagree, I think. With the normal drug trade all of the players are doing it out of free will, which is to be commended. With illegal prescription diversion, the suppliers are not a willing participant, and their rights must be protected. If you wanted to set up an alternative supply chain by freely giving prescription medications to addicts, that would be a different story. Prescriptions are not 'illegal' for the same reasons other drugs are, for them there are legitimate reasons for controlling their access. An overhaul of that system would be a different matter altogether.

I do agree mandatory sentencing is a farce, and has been since Hammurabi.

Jer_X,

I'm not sure I follow you. While true that drug companies don't intend their product to be abused, I don't see how that's any different than a gun manufacturer who doesn't intend for its products to be misused.

In both cases, someone intent on abusing the product will find the means to acquire it. Do we make potentially lethal products illegal when they are misused or abused? Generally we don't, which is a good thing.

You note that using prescription drugs without a prescription is illegal for different reasons than people using other illegal recreational drugs, say, meth or cannabis or cocaine. Why? If people abused antibiotics, I could see a public health angle (i.e., superbugs) but they don't, really.

How is Rush Limbaugh's oxycontin different from Kurt Cobain's smack?

BTW, I agree that mandatory sentencing is poor policy. Why have a human judge/jury if all you need is an algorithm? Because justice requires human judgment, that's why.

""Ms Collette gave birth while she was incarcerated. She was shackled to a hospital bed until the final phase of labour. And she was sent back to prison after only 48 hours bonding with her newborn son, who went to live with his father.""

This is BEYOND barbaric. for women, the baby is part of her...it is sickening to treat a woman that way. Just 48 hours...two days. And for what? A few pills! This is an absolute disgrace: even a cow gets a week to be with her newborn calf, and even a cow is not chained when giving birth.

But what is even more surprising that is Americans will now justify wars to 'promote' womens rights, when women right here at home are treated worse than animals.

Living just north of the border and watching recent events in the USA, my contempt for that country and its citizens is growing daily.

After reading all the comments on this topic, it looks like we're arguing about whether recreational drugs should be illegal or not, whether they're dangerous or not, and so on. That's not the point of this commentary. The point is that current mandatory sentences are barbaric and cruel. We can debate what the proper punishment ought to be for murder, rape, embezzlement, or speeding without proposing to legalize those crimes, and we can do the same with drug crimes. Can't we agree that dealing drugs is wrong, and also agree that 7 years in prison for selling a handful of pills is also wrong?

Another problem with our drug crime laws is that most drug crimes are felonies, even if they involve relatively small amounts of money and drugs and involve no physical injury or threats to anyone. Even aver being released, a felony record is a huge obstacle to anyone trying to live a straight life after pay for their crime. Even in good times, few employers will hire felons if they have a choice. Furthermore, convicted felons are legally banned from a large number of jobs, and are also restricted in other ways such as voting rights and gun rights. It's almost as if we designed a system with the express purpose of ensuring that criminals remain criminals, by denying them many of the opportunities of a normal life even after they've served their time.

As for Ms Collette, one has to wonder what kind of lawyer she had who advised her to plead guilty to a crime with a 7 year mandatory sentence. It seems to me she would have had nothing to lose by pleading not guilty. Even if the evidence against her was strong, perhaps a sympathetic jury, aware of the mandatory prison term, would have acquitted her. "Jury nullification" does still happen.

"That's a small handful of pills."

That's only what she pleaded guilty to.

"Even if you think drugs should be illegal (which I don't)"

I guess you don't have to share the underground train with 'asylum seekers' selling 'soft' drugs and their clientele looking for them. I wish I could make every drugs libertarian, every Human Rights Watch or Amnesty open borders extremist, and every other like minded advocate to share space with them.

I am afraid that your (I think mistaken) belief that drugs should be legal is getting in the way of your push to get sentences down to more reasonable levels. So the debate is getting polarised (as is so much of US politics) between the super-bashers who would imprison forever anyone who does something that they fear and the personal freedom brigade who wish to abolish drugs crime by the simple expedient of making it all legal! (of course one might 'abolish' mugging by making it legal, too...).

So let the Economist advocate the moderate middle, where selling a handful of drugs that might injure someone is wrong on a similar scale to attacking someone but not injuring them grievously.

Heimdall: A doctor takes an oath to treat ill patients, they don't take an oath to be a drug dealer. If someone becomes addicted to viagra, you don't say 'oh, just make viagra legal'. The process of obtaining a prescription for a prescription medication is in place for a reason. What you are advocating, I think, is to abolish doctors?

How is Rush Limbaugh's oxycontin different from Kurt Cobain's smack?

Simply because Kurt's smack was sold to him by someone who knew he wanted to get high, and they were fine with being the dealer, it was a choice they made. Rush's oxycontin originally (hopefully) was prescribed by a doctor acting in good faith to treat a medical condition, and dispensed by a pharmacist with that same good faith. Prescription abusers need treatment or they need to find a different drug to abuse.