Who Didn't Need Vicodin in the Early '90s?

Ten years after John McCain became a perennial presidential candidate, and 14 years after the Phoenix New Times exhaustively documented the story of Cindy McCain's stage-managed addiction-confession (and less-publicized double-barrelled legal attack on the whistleblower who put her within arm's length of a 20-year jail sentence), the Washington Post flexes its reportorial muscle on the still-murky tale of how a senator's wife got away with asking the doctor of her international charity to write prescriptions for painkillers in the names of three of her unsuspecting employees.

So anything new here? Mostly, unusual skepticism about Cindy's always-shifting timeline and cause-effect explanations, plus extensive quotes from participants who rarely if ever go on the record, especially the whistleblower in question, Tom Gosinski.

"It's not just about her addiction, it's what she did to cover up her addiction and the lives of other people that she ruined, or put at jeopardy at least," Gosinski said in an interview this week. […]

[Gosinski] eventually gave several lengthy interviews and provided The Post with a copy of his [early 1990s] journal. He subsequently cut off contact and asked that his name not be printed, saying he became frightened by the prospect of facing the McCain campaign on his own.

On Wednesday, he said he had changed his mind. He appeared at a news briefing in Arlington set up by a Democratic Party consultant.

Gosinski, a registered Republican, said that he sought help orchestrating a single media event because so many reporters wanted his story, but that he has had no contact with the Obama campaign or the Democratic National Committee.

He also signed an agreement with the Center for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a D.C.-based watchdog group, which will provide legal representation for him in the event of a lawsuit.

As always, I maintain that in a more just world, Vicodin and Percocet would be available over the counter. Anyway, so how is candidate John McCain on drug policy? He's one of the biggest drug warriors out there.