'Writing About Things on the Internet is a Crime'

The Colbert Report recently aired a funny segment about Andrew Feldmar, the Canadian psychotherapist who was denied entry into the United States because a border guard Googled his name and discovered an academic article in which Feldmar discussed his LSD use in the '60s and '70s. "There are millions of people who have done as many drugs or more than I have," Feldmar observes, "and they have free entry. I got caught because I wrote about it." But as Colbert explains, "writing about things on the Internet is a crime." I learned about the Feldmar segment—the first in Colbert's series of "Nailed 'Em" stories about public enemies caught by heroic law enforcement officers—from Tony Newman at the Drug Policy Alliance. Newman also points out a column on Feldmar by New York Times legal reporter Adam Liptak, in which a Customs and Border Protection spokesman explains, "If you are or have been a drug user, that's one of the many things that can make you inadmissible to the United States."