McCain’s Other War Frauds

James Bovard

Amongst all the media teeth-gnashing over the question of whether McCain did special favors for his blondie lobbyist,  his wife’s sweetheart deal for massive narcotics theft in the 1990s has been forgotten.

If a poor black woman from Anacostia had committed the crimes that Cindy McCain committed, the black woman might have been sent to prison for the duration of her life.

John McCain has never shown any courage on the drug war.  As long as people like his wife don’t need to fear jail time for crimes, there is no reason to reform the law to cease the persecution of other Americans.  

Here’s an excerpt on the case from an article I did for Playboy in 1997. (Full text of the piece, which details how many congressmen’s kin escaped hard time for drug offenses, is here).

* Cindy McCain, the wife of Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.), admitted stealing Percocet and Vicodin from the American Voluntary Medical Team, an organization that aids Third World countries. Percocet and Vicodin are schedule 2 drugs, in the same legal category as opium. Each pill theft carries a penalty of one year in prison and a monetary fine. McCain stole the pills over several years. She became addicted to the drugs after undergoing back surgery. 

    But rather than face prosecution, McCain was allowed to enter a pretrial diversion program and escaped with no blemish on her record. McCain did suffer from the incident, though: Shortly after the scandal broke, a Variety Club of Arizona ceremony at which she was to receive a humanitarian of the year award for her work with the medical team was canceled because of poor ticket sales. 

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