Pubdate: Sun, 10 Dec 2000
Source: Alameda Times-Star (CA)
Copyright: 2000 MediaNews Group, Inc. and ANG Newspapers
Contact:  66 Jack London Sq. Oakland, CA 94607
Website: http://www.newschoice.com/newspapers/alameda/times/
Author: Clarence Page
Note: Clarence Page writes for Tribune Media Services.
Bookmark: http://mapinc.org/prop36.htm

DRUG ABUSERS SENT TO JAIL FOR A SICKNESS

WE didn't need any more dramatic examples of how drug addiction should be 
treated as a health issue, not just a criminal issue, but Robert Downey Jr. 
has given one to us anyway.

Like Darryl Strawberry, Downey just can't seem to keep illegal drugs out of 
his bloodstream or his body out of jail.

While most of the rest of the country was enjoying Thanksgiving weekend, 
Downey was getting busted for possession of cocaine and methamphetamines in 
his Palm Springs hotel room, after police were alerted by a tipster.

The arrest comes barely three months after he left Corcoran State Prison in 
California, where he served little more than a year of an original 
three-year sentence. That sentence came after years of drug-related 
incidents, arrests and second chances that have provided late-night 
comedians with more laughs than Elizabeth Taylor's marriages used to.

But the comedy masks our national astonishment: Downey had the money and 
connections to get the best treatment possible. He also had a bright 
future. He had just joined TV's "Ally McBeal" cast, received rave reviews 
and signed to begin two new movie deals. And after all that, he still 
couldn't kick the habit?

Similar questions are raised by Strawberry, the former baseball star and 
current colon cancer patient, who was arrested Oct. 25 after walking away 
from a residential drug treatment center in Florida. He had been under 
house arrest there for 1999 charges of drug possession and soliciting a 
prostitute. While AWOL from the treatment center, prosecutors say, he 
smoked crack cocaine and took 10 antidepressant pills.

Do these men have a death wish? By their own accounts, yes.

"Life hasn't been worth living for me, that's the honest truth," news 
accounts quoted Strawberry as saying in court. "I am not afraid of death."

It's "like I've got a shotgun in my mouth, with my finger on the trigger, 
and I like the taste of the gun metal," Downey told a judge last year.

With those words, Strawberry and Downey speak for addicts everywhere. They 
have a death wish, whether or not they realize it. The question for the 
rest of us is, do we want to help them pull the trigger? Or can more of 
these sad cases be saved?

That, it seems to me, is what happens when our national drug policy treats 
non-violent drug offenders as criminals when they should be patients.

In our 30-plus-year-old war on drugs, tactics shifted during the Ronald 
Reagan years from treating drugs as a health problem to treating them 
almost exclusively as a criminal matter.

Personal responsibility became the byword. Instead of large-scale treatment 
of cocaine addicts, there was a new policy of "Just Say No." That, as one 
former drug official from the Jimmy Carter administration said, is like 
telling someone who's clinically depressed to "have a nice day."

The war-on-crime approach continued with President Clinton, a centrist who 
did not want to be seen as soft on drugs. His drug czar Barry McCaffrey 
even pressured Donna Shalala, secretary of Health and Human Services, into 
backing away from a planned endorsement of needle-exchange programs.

California voters recently approved an initiative to spend $60 million to 
divert non-violent drug abusers in the state's prison system into treatment 
programs. Drug-related incarcerations grew 25-fold since 1980 in 
California, leading the nation, according to a study the Justice Policy 
Institute released in July. Almost half of all drug offenders imprisoned in 
California last year were imprisoned for simple possession, the institute 
reported.

Other states should make similar moves. Non-violent drug offenders have 
grown faster than just about any other category of criminals in our 
nation's state prison population. Nearly one of four American prison 
inmates is being held on drug-related offenses, the institute reports. The 
number of violent offenders entering state prisons has doubled, and the 
number of nonviolent prisoners has tripled.

Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., has proposed federal funding for states that 
seek to divert nonviolent drug offenders into treatment instead of prison.

On the Republican side, you have small-government drug reformers like Rep. 
Tom Campbell of California who has argued for more prison drug-treatment 
programs and even experiments in supplying drugs to addicts the way Zurich, 
Switzerland, tried with mixed success.

Michigan's Republican Gov. John Engler also has endorsed modifying his 
state's mandatory sentencing for drug offenders to encourage more 
treatment. New York's Republican Gov. George Pataki has talked about making 
similar modifications in that state's get-tough drug laws.

We have a fought a war on drugs -- as Reagan used to say about Lyndon 
Johnson's war on poverty -- and drugs have won. A major reason is our 
failure to treat the conditions, psychological and otherwise, that lead 
users to abuse the stuff in the first place.

As jailbirds go, Downey and Strawberry put a face on America's drug plague 
that the movies seldom show. Neither Downey nor Strawberry has stuck a gun 
under anyone's nose or snatched a gold chain from anyone's neck or busted 
open a parking meter to get the change inside.

At its best, the criminal justice system has helped stop drug addicts from 
killing themselves. But when it lets non-violent offenders back on the 
street without treating the conditions, psychological and otherwise, that 
feeds the addiction.

Clarence Page writes for Tribune Media Services.
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