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>>>I was surprised that the protagonist was so unsympathetic I don't understand how you saw that. No prior arrests or convictions, claims to have never been a

>>>I was surprised that the protagonist was so unsympathetic I don't understand how you saw that. No prior arrests or convictions, claims to have never been addicted, first arrest of this type, had lucrative career removed from him and income potential ruined. Should they have added that he liked kittens?

tptacek 14y ago
He did straight-up break the law, deliberately. He was carrying around recreational narcotics. And he didn't get prison time; he got probation, and presumably finished up his MBA. The list of things you can do to lose a broker job at Merrill is very long. In other words, he got off a lot easier than a 19 year old carrying a bag of weed would on the West Side of Chicago. There are much more sympathetic stories about people's lives being ruined by drug laws. For instance, there are doctors who specialize in the treatment of intractable pain --- as you can imagine, the life stories of the people who they are treating are heartbreaking. Some of those doctors have had their entire careers destroyed; some of them have received lengthy prison sentences. All because they prescribed drugs that can in fact be lawfully prescribed. (There is a backstory to those stories too, of course; a terrible injustice has been done to those doctors, but not out of malice. It turns out that there really is a special breed of asshole doctors who prescribe things like fentanyl for recreational addicts.)
- millzlane 14y ago
  "In other words, he got off a lot easier than a 19 year old carrying a bag of weed would on the West Side of Chicago." As a person who was truly in the wrong place as the wrong time, I agree with this statement. A seemingly good call could turn into a bad call instantly.
- jetti 14y ago
  "In other words, he got off a lot easier than a 19 year old carrying a bag of weed would on the West Side of Chicago." Proud to say that Chicago has de-criminalized small amounts of Marijuana. (http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-06-28/news/ct-met-chicago-city-council-0628-20120628_1_pot-possession-possession-of-small-amounts-pot-tickets http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-06-28/news/ct-met-ch...)
  - tptacek 14y ago
    Marijuana law in Chicago remains a tool by which the police can arbitrarily take people off the streets. Dealing weed remains a felony. The thresholds at which possession becomes intent remain arbitrary. I am sympathetic to the police here (there are probably many very good public policy reasons to get West Side dealers off the street) but the law itself is a bit of a clusterfuck.
- derefr 14y ago
  I think the reason this has received such attention from HN isn't the sympathy it could garner (there isn't much), but rather the empathy. Only a small minority of HN can truly identify with those who are in intractable pain; they can understand their plight, but they don't feel it themselves. But when thinking about someone with a great job who was "on their way to the top" making one bad (and harmless!) decision, and then losing everything they had worked for because of it, and having to start from scratch with a nearly-indelible black mark on their record--well, I can imagine the mirror neurons of a lot of HNers are firing at that pain.
  - tptacek 14y ago
    I feel like more insight is being generated by those comments that point out how correlated this guy's personal judgement and financial advisory performance is likely to be. Also: he got the conviction expunged. The people with "nearly indelible black marks" don't have that option.
    - summerdown2 14y ago
      I don't understand why you feel his work ability is at all correlated with this. It seems to me I hear the same narrative frequently with American politicians: "Clinton's sexual misconduct means he's bound to be a bad president," etc. This goes to the concept of "character," which I honestly don't understand. Why do we insist that people be flawless in all aspects of their lives? I find history to be full of examples of people who excel at one trait but are terrible at another. Doesn't he get a private life, uncorrelated with work? I mean, I'd understand it if the article pointed out he was a heavy drug user who needed to steal for a habit, but the only thing this guy seems to have done wrong was handle stupid laws in a poor way. Does that stop him dealing with stocks? I don't think the two correlate, and I think people ought to have to make more significant mistakes before its time to discard them. I guess what I feel here is this could be anyone, and I'm uncomfortable with such a punishment for a small error.
- mikecane 14y ago
  >>>He did straight-up break the law, deliberately. He was carrying around recreational narcotics. One pill. Have a sense of proportion. And go read Les Miserables. You are being Javert.
  - tptacek 14y ago
    I feel like you're not seeing the comparison I'm drawing here. The doctors who are being screwed over by our drug laws aren't breaking the law. They are the victims of an error prone and occasionally capricious effort to suppress illegal narcotics dealing by unscrupulous doctors. This guy did break the law, did it knowingly, and got caught in part because he displayed poor judgement in dealing with the police and prosecutors. I am not saying "do not have sympathy for this guy". I'm saying, "meter that sympathy out in comparison to people who have truly been ruined by capricious drug laws".
    - boxy_brown 14y ago
      This comment is pure misanthropy. Some of the people expressing their concern in this thread are THE VERY SAME PEOPLE YOU SCOLD US FOR NOT PAYING ATTENTION TO. You're telling the victims of drug prohibition to not feel bad for other victims of drug prohibition. You are a hateful person.
- xiaoma 14y ago
  >He did straight-up break the law, deliberately There are so many laws on the books this is virtually guaranteed to be true of everyone on this site.
  - tptacek 14y ago
    Give me a break. Carrying around one of the most famously illegal prescription narcotics is not the same as "the 502 and 1/2 federal felonies you can commit while making orange juice for yourself in the morning". Am I violating some federal law somehow as we speak? Perhaps, but I am not aware of which one. This guy was fully aware of what he was doing.
    - xiaoma 14y ago
      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.
      - tptacek 14y ago
        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.
- vijayr 14y ago
  There are much more sympathetic stories about people's lives being ruined by drug laws. May be. But those stories don't make this story "light". He still had his life destroyed, for what? Some lame laws, and some inefficiency in the system?
  - tptacek 14y ago
    Even the article points out that his life was not destroyed. In the headline.
- gojomo 14y ago
  "He was carrying around recreational narcotics." That wording, including the use of present participle ('carrying') and plural-like word ('narcotics'), makes it sound like this was an ongoing activity with multiple doses. He had one pill in his pocket. His story, that he'd just received it at the concert from which he was returning, with no intent for or history of use, is plausible. (Even if we assume he's shaded the story to make himself look better, the prosecution and damage to his livelihood was not based on any other evidence.) Most people will not find someone completely unsympathetic as soon as they "straight-up break the law", especially if the discussion is about the law itself. The point of the article isn't that 'James' is innocent, but that the punishment is disproportionate, and (via the details of the required classes) often absurdly wasteful and mistargeted. The fact that there may be other even more sympathetic stories doesn't weaken this one. Their stories are additive in the case against the drug war, not competing with each other for a rationed amount of available sympathy. For example, some people are going to figure a licensed professional doctor in trouble for suspect prescriptions should have known better (and received a strong defense at trial). But, hearing about James' naive errors -- holding a single pill, consenting to the car search, relying on his lawyer and probation officer -- they may recognize mistakes they might themselves make, and sympathize more deeply.
  - tptacek 14y ago
    Since I think drug laws are bad, I find it easy to agree that any punishment, no matter how lenient, is disproportionate to the offense.
    - Foy 14y ago
      You've said "drug laws are bad" at least two or three times, so I feel you must want a response... Drug laws are not bad. The current state of drug laws in the states, however, is appalling. I believe, for instance, that some substances should always be strictly controlled / banned like Heroine or Cocaine for instance. I believe Marijuana should be legal (at the VERY least, decriminalized) and treated similarly to alcohol and tobacco. Psychedelics are clearly a gray area, they seem harmful but really not enough research has been done. Creative breakthroughs aside, I'm not really sure how addictive or destructive they are. In summary, drug laws are not bad in general; they are just bad at the moment, in the U.S. specifically. It's just such a shame that democracy doesn't lend itself to perceived criminal leniency. No politician looking to get elected is going to advocate taking it easier on criminals even if those criminals he wants to be easier on shouldn't even be criminals in the first place. I blame Nixon. /endrant
- glenra 14y ago
  By what logic is an oxytocin pill in this context considered "recreational narcotics"? It's a pain pill. A drug that is legal to prescribe and probably was legally prescribed to somebody. Even if some nitwit bureaucrat defines possessing that pill without a prescription as illegal, what logic lets you determine he was breaking that law "deliberately" as opposed to, say, "ignorantly"? The fact that he consented to search tends to argue otherwise.

tptacek 14y ago

He did straight-up break the law, deliberately. He was carrying around recreational narcotics. And he didn't get prison time; he got probation, and presumably finished up his MBA. The list of things you can do to lose a broker job at Merrill is very long. In other words, he got off a lot easier than a 19 year old carrying a bag of weed would on the West Side of Chicago. There are much more sympathetic stories about people's lives being ruined by drug laws. For instance, there are doctors who specialize in the treatment of intractable pain --- as you can imagine, the life stories of the people who they are treating are heartbreaking. Some of those doctors have had their entire careers destroyed; some of them have received lengthy prison sentences. All because they prescribed drugs that can in fact be lawfully prescribed. (There is a backstory to those stories too, of course; a terrible injustice has been done to those doctors, but not out of malice. It turns out that there really is a special breed of asshole doctors who prescribe things like fentanyl for recreational addicts.)

millzlane 14y ago
"In other words, he got off a lot easier than a 19 year old carrying a bag of weed would on the West Side of Chicago." As a person who was truly in the wrong place as the wrong time, I agree with this statement. A seemingly good call could turn into a bad call instantly.
jetti 14y ago
"In other words, he got off a lot easier than a 19 year old carrying a bag of weed would on the West Side of Chicago." Proud to say that Chicago has de-criminalized small amounts of Marijuana. (http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-06-28/news/ct-met-chicago-city-council-0628-20120628_1_pot-possession-possession-of-small-amounts-pot-tickets http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-06-28/news/ct-met-ch...)
- tptacek 14y ago
  Marijuana law in Chicago remains a tool by which the police can arbitrarily take people off the streets. Dealing weed remains a felony. The thresholds at which possession becomes intent remain arbitrary. I am sympathetic to the police here (there are probably many very good public policy reasons to get West Side dealers off the street) but the law itself is a bit of a clusterfuck.
derefr 14y ago
I think the reason this has received such attention from HN isn't the sympathy it could garner (there isn't much), but rather the empathy. Only a small minority of HN can truly identify with those who are in intractable pain; they can understand their plight, but they don't feel it themselves. But when thinking about someone with a great job who was "on their way to the top" making one bad (and harmless!) decision, and then losing everything they had worked for because of it, and having to start from scratch with a nearly-indelible black mark on their record--well, I can imagine the mirror neurons of a lot of HNers are firing at that pain.
- tptacek 14y ago
  I feel like more insight is being generated by those comments that point out how correlated this guy's personal judgement and financial advisory performance is likely to be. Also: he got the conviction expunged. The people with "nearly indelible black marks" don't have that option.
  - summerdown2 14y ago
    I don't understand why you feel his work ability is at all correlated with this. It seems to me I hear the same narrative frequently with American politicians: "Clinton's sexual misconduct means he's bound to be a bad president," etc. This goes to the concept of "character," which I honestly don't understand. Why do we insist that people be flawless in all aspects of their lives? I find history to be full of examples of people who excel at one trait but are terrible at another. Doesn't he get a private life, uncorrelated with work? I mean, I'd understand it if the article pointed out he was a heavy drug user who needed to steal for a habit, but the only thing this guy seems to have done wrong was handle stupid laws in a poor way. Does that stop him dealing with stocks? I don't think the two correlate, and I think people ought to have to make more significant mistakes before its time to discard them. I guess what I feel here is this could be anyone, and I'm uncomfortable with such a punishment for a small error.
mikecane 14y ago
>>>He did straight-up break the law, deliberately. He was carrying around recreational narcotics. One pill. Have a sense of proportion. And go read Les Miserables. You are being Javert.
- tptacek 14y ago
  I feel like you're not seeing the comparison I'm drawing here. The doctors who are being screwed over by our drug laws aren't breaking the law. They are the victims of an error prone and occasionally capricious effort to suppress illegal narcotics dealing by unscrupulous doctors. This guy did break the law, did it knowingly, and got caught in part because he displayed poor judgement in dealing with the police and prosecutors. I am not saying "do not have sympathy for this guy". I'm saying, "meter that sympathy out in comparison to people who have truly been ruined by capricious drug laws".
  - boxy_brown 14y ago
    This comment is pure misanthropy. Some of the people expressing their concern in this thread are THE VERY SAME PEOPLE YOU SCOLD US FOR NOT PAYING ATTENTION TO. You're telling the victims of drug prohibition to not feel bad for other victims of drug prohibition. You are a hateful person.
xiaoma 14y ago
>He did straight-up break the law, deliberately There are so many laws on the books this is virtually guaranteed to be true of everyone on this site.
- tptacek 14y ago
  Give me a break. Carrying around one of the most famously illegal prescription narcotics is not the same as "the 502 and 1/2 federal felonies you can commit while making orange juice for yourself in the morning". Am I violating some federal law somehow as we speak? Perhaps, but I am not aware of which one. This guy was fully aware of what he was doing.
  - xiaoma 14y ago
    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.
    - tptacek 14y ago
      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.
vijayr 14y ago
There are much more sympathetic stories about people's lives being ruined by drug laws. May be. But those stories don't make this story "light". He still had his life destroyed, for what? Some lame laws, and some inefficiency in the system?
- tptacek 14y ago
  Even the article points out that his life was not destroyed. In the headline.
gojomo 14y ago
"He was carrying around recreational narcotics." That wording, including the use of present participle ('carrying') and plural-like word ('narcotics'), makes it sound like this was an ongoing activity with multiple doses. He had one pill in his pocket. His story, that he'd just received it at the concert from which he was returning, with no intent for or history of use, is plausible. (Even if we assume he's shaded the story to make himself look better, the prosecution and damage to his livelihood was not based on any other evidence.) Most people will not find someone completely unsympathetic as soon as they "straight-up break the law", especially if the discussion is about the law itself. The point of the article isn't that 'James' is innocent, but that the punishment is disproportionate, and (via the details of the required classes) often absurdly wasteful and mistargeted. The fact that there may be other even more sympathetic stories doesn't weaken this one. Their stories are additive in the case against the drug war, not competing with each other for a rationed amount of available sympathy. For example, some people are going to figure a licensed professional doctor in trouble for suspect prescriptions should have known better (and received a strong defense at trial). But, hearing about James' naive errors -- holding a single pill, consenting to the car search, relying on his lawyer and probation officer -- they may recognize mistakes they might themselves make, and sympathize more deeply.
- tptacek 14y ago
  Since I think drug laws are bad, I find it easy to agree that any punishment, no matter how lenient, is disproportionate to the offense.
  - Foy 14y ago
    You've said "drug laws are bad" at least two or three times, so I feel you must want a response... Drug laws are not bad. The current state of drug laws in the states, however, is appalling. I believe, for instance, that some substances should always be strictly controlled / banned like Heroine or Cocaine for instance. I believe Marijuana should be legal (at the VERY least, decriminalized) and treated similarly to alcohol and tobacco. Psychedelics are clearly a gray area, they seem harmful but really not enough research has been done. Creative breakthroughs aside, I'm not really sure how addictive or destructive they are. In summary, drug laws are not bad in general; they are just bad at the moment, in the U.S. specifically. It's just such a shame that democracy doesn't lend itself to perceived criminal leniency. No politician looking to get elected is going to advocate taking it easier on criminals even if those criminals he wants to be easier on shouldn't even be criminals in the first place. I blame Nixon. /endrant
glenra 14y ago
By what logic is an oxytocin pill in this context considered "recreational narcotics"? It's a pain pill. A drug that is legal to prescribe and probably was legally prescribed to somebody. Even if some nitwit bureaucrat defines possessing that pill without a prescription as illegal, what logic lets you determine he was breaking that law "deliberately" as opposed to, say, "ignorantly"? The fact that he consented to search tends to argue otherwise.