Pubdate: Sat, 02 Dec 2000
Source: Daily Camera (CO)
Copyright: 2000 The Daily Camera.
Contact:  Open Forum, Daily Camera, P.O. Box 591, Boulder, CO 80306
Fax: 303-449-9358
Website: http://www.bouldernews.com/
Author: Richard Cohen

DOWNEY'S IS THE FACE OF FAILED DRUG WAR

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 recent Supreme Court ruling, 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 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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