Site Meter Reflections on Playboy: I always enjoy seeing a narc humiliated

April 17, 2006

I always enjoy seeing a narc humiliated

Thanks to Hit & Run, I’m experiencing schadenfreude at the sight of Drug Enforcement Administration agent Lee Paige shooting himself in the foot while doing a presentation on firearms for Florida children. I like to imagine that the ghost of Peter McWilliams, who choked to death on his own vomit in 2000 because a federal judge wouldn’t let him use marijuana for his AIDS and cancer, pulled the trigger. Paige is suing the DEA for leaking the video, which he claims has ruined his career as an undercover cop and made him a laughingstock in public. Serves him right, I say, for choosing such an evil career.

I don’t think evil is too strong a word. Drug prohibition largely creates the “drug problem” that it purports to solve. It also encourages the police and the courts to rationalize ever greater assaults on our dignity and our liberty. I’m glad to live under the rule of law, and I appreciate the difficult, dangerous, and sometimes thankless work of those who enforce it. But anyone who specializes in enforcing our abominable drug laws automatically earns my contempt.

Some of my readers may think I’m going too far. Surely crack, meth, and heroin are so dangerously addictive that the law needs to protect society by prohibiting them. Wrong.

Perhaps the most revealing aspect of the video is Paige’s ridiculous stoicism after taking a bullet to the foot. Panic spreads slowly through the room as the kids realize that he needs immediate medical attention, but he bravely continues the presentation as if nothing had happened. What a trouper (eye roll). The DEA has the integrity to practice what it preaches. Many people with chronic pain have to endure it bravely, because the DEA bullies doctors into undermedicating them. Officer Paige, we could use a little less machismo and a little more logic and compassion from you and your gang. Suddenly, the title character of American Dad doesn’t look like a caricature.

Posted by Brian Sorgatz at 5:42 PM

  • Blogger Mama Kelly left this comment at April 18, 2006 5:08 PM  
    my husband IS a chronic pain patient and we have had to battle for every medication increase he's had over the course of 3 years ...

    while the Drs know that a patient will develop tolerance to a drug and eventually need more to get the same level of pain relief they will still make you jump through repeated hoops in order to have your pain controlled enough to live a semblance of a normal life

  • Blogger Brian Sorgatz left this comment at April 18, 2006 8:07 PM  
    Mama Kelly,
    Thanks for sharing. Stories like your husband’s make it hard for me to empathize with self-righteous bozos like Paige.

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