Hi Lil and welcome. My husband has a law degree also 
and he couldn;t stop what our daughter was doing either. It made no difference to her that he saw people go to jail every day.
From what I have read it sounds very much like your son is buying drugs. He has stolen enough things from you to have enough money up until now. My daughter also stole from us many times, then began stealing from other people and shoplifting, which she got arrested for. I would not give him any student loan money, that is a farce. You know he isn't using it for school and he intended to take the money for next semester and run. I had to laugh when Iread he wants to move to Colorado, so did my daughter. I questioned her about never havign any interestin Colorado before and she said she's always wanted to move there.....hahahahahahaha that's just one example of her manipulation. She also got suspended from college in her first semester for smoking pot and drinking in the dorm. We were left paying tuition and student loans on classes she never went to.
Looking back I can see my daughter was doing drugs way back when she was 14. We were not in denial, we called the police on her many times and she had several court appearances before she was even 18. We kicked her out of the house at 18, she lived with a heroin addict for 3 months, she went to rehab, a sober living house and finally in her own apartment. She is now living with her boyfriend, a nice guy but has no license since he had a dui years ago and can't pay the court costs and fines to get it back and he has no ambition to get it, but she is not doing drugs any longer and we have a good relationship with her. She now realizes she blew many chances to go to college and make something of herself but is currently working a dead end minimum wage job, certainly not what we wanted for her.
I would not give your son the car to go anywhere. If he wants to live off the land let him go do it. Be there with the light in the window for when he finally grows up but I would not help finance his drug habit. I belong to a parent support group for drug abusers, the stories are all the same, the parents are wonderful people, they did not do anything wrong. Drugs are out there and especially ofr a kid like yours and mine who don't feel they fit in, they are a huge draw. My daughter use to say the only time she felt normal was when she was drinking or smoking pot. She was not comfortable in her own skin. The ony thing we could do was not enable her substance abuse until she matured and saw things in a dfferent light.
