Pubdate: Sun, 03 Dec 2000
Source: San Diego Union Tribune (CA)
Copyright: 2000 Union-Tribune Publishing Co.
Contact:  PO Box 120191, San Diego, CA, 92112-0191
Fax: (619) 293-1440
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Author: Richard Cohen, The Washington Post

A PERFECT FACE FOR THE WAR ON DRUGS

I hope that when Hollywood gets around to making "The Robert Downey Story," 
Downey gets to play himself. He is one of the few screen actors around who 
has the talent, not to mention the experience, to convince the American 
people that a drug addict is a sick person and not a criminal. But in the 
movie, as in life itself, Downey will be a jailbird.

At least, that's the way it now looks. Having been busted on drug charges 
last week, he was jailed overnight and is due back in court Dec. 27 for a 
hearing. The actor was allegedly found in a conked out state, and police 
discovered cocaine and methamphetamines in his hotel room. He has been down 
this road before.

It was only last August that Downey got out of Corcoran State Prison. He 
had served a bit more than a year of an original three-year sentence. 
Corcoran is where Charles Manson and Sirhan Sirhan, killers both, are held. 
It is hard, hard time.

With Manson and Sirhan we can all name their victims. But who is Downey's? 
It has to be himself. He has committed no violent crime, robbed no bank 
nor, may I add, offered me a cell phone service that works only 
sporadically. The Palm Springs bust is illustrative. The Merv Griffin 
Resort Hotel and Givenchy Spa received no complaints and was blissfully 
unaware that in one of its rooms, a famous actor was determinedly 
sabotaging his career. Not so much as a towel was taken.

To say that Downey has a problem is to understate matters by a considerable 
degree. He has lost his wife, his child and -- it may turn out -- his 
career. He has put a fortune up his nose and, like any addict, lied to 
friends and loved ones. His first allegiance, his only allegiance, is to 
his next fix. I pity the man.

But I do not fear him. That is to say, I do not fear him any more than I do 
an alcoholic. I would not want either driving a car while zonked. But 
neither one is a criminal just on account of their addiction. If they steal 
to get drugs (or if they drive drunk), then they have committed a crime. 
Even then, though, what they need is treatment, not mere incarceration. Too 
often what they get is jail time.

Downey's is the perfect face of the war on drugs. Just as his real victim 
is himself, so we have made war on ourselves. The lust for arrests has 
caused police agencies to throw the Constitution to the wind and, 
frequently, stop people on the probable cause of being black or Hispanic. 
On the New Jersey Turnpike, at least eight out of 10 searches made by state 
troopers were of minorities. Seventy percent of the time, they came up 
empty-handed, leaving a residue of bitterness and the rest of us no safer.

Until a Supreme Court ruling last week, some police departments established 
roadblocks designed to catch people with drugs. Applying common sense, the 
court said that a sobriety checkpoint was designed to protect the public 
from drunk drivers, but possession of drugs was a different matter. That's 
a law enforcement issue and, as the Constitution requires, a warrant is 
necessary. Searching every other car is hardly what you would call 
"probable cause."

Prisoners convicted for drug-related crimes clog the jails. As with stops 
on the Jersey Turnpike, the effect is racially disproportionate. Blacks 
comprise about 12 percent of the population but account for 62 percent of 
drug offenders in state prisons. All together, federal prisons hold almost 
240,000 persons convicted of drug -- not violent -- crimes, and the states 
hold about 200,000 more. This is an expensive proposition.

There's some evidence that Americans are getting fed up with a hard-line 
approach to drugs. Voters in nine states have approved the use of marijuana 
for medical necessity -- three just this year alone. In California, voters 
approved Proposition 36, a referendum to have nonviolent drug offenders 
sentenced to treatment facilities rather than to jail.

Downey, who has been in and out of treatment, is sad proof that it doesn't 
always work. Some problems defy neat solutions -- alcoholism, for one. But 
the present policy does damage to the Constitution, makes criminals out of 
mere users, divides us along racial and ethnic lines and has not materially 
dented our drug problem when it comes to hard-core addicts. Downey himself 
ought to make the movie. His only problem would be the "pitch." It's hard 
to say if our drug policy is a tragedy or a farce.
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