Prescription results in drug trafficking charges


So much for presumed innocent

Courtesy of Radley Balko at The Agitator, here's another reason (pun intended) for stopping the drug war madness.

Tampa's Mark O'Hara was released from prison this week. He was serving a 25-year sentence for possession of 58 Vicodin tablets. Prosecutors acknowledge he wasn't selling the drug. They acknowledge that he had a prescription for it. At his trial, two doctors testified they'd been treating O'Hara since the early 1990s for pain related to gout and an automobile accident.

But prosecutors inexplicably brought drug trafficking charges anyway, because as the article explains, "Under the law, simply possessing the quantity of pills he had constitutes trafficking."

This is simply stunning. The man was sentenced to 25 years for possessing 58 pills for which he had a legal prescription.

He had the pills legally and he was still prosecuted.

— NeoWayland

Posted: Fri - July 27, 2007 at 12:31 PM  Tag


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