Pubdate: Mon, 04 Dec 2000 Source: Dallas Morning News (TX) Copyright: 2000 The Dallas Morning News Contact: P.O. Box 655237, Dallas, Texas 75265 Fax: (972) 263-0456 Feedback: http://dmnweb.dallasnews.com/letters/ Website: http://www.dallasnews.com/ Forum: http://forums.dallasnews.com/cgi-bin/wwwthreads.pl Author: Richard Cohen Note: Richard Cohen writes for the Washington Post. DOWNEY CASE SHOWS PROBLEM WITH DRUG LAWS I hope that when Hollywood gets around to making The Robert Downey Story, Mr. 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, Mr. Downey will be a jailbird. At least, that is the way it now looks. Having been busted on drug charges the other day, he was jailed overnight and is due back in court Dec. 27 for a hearing. The actor allegedly was 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 summer that Mr. 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 killers Charles Manson and Sirhan Sirhan are held. It is hard, hard time. With Charles Manson and Sirhan Sirhan, we can name their victims. But who is Mr. 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 a famous actor was determinedly sabotaging his career in one of its rooms. Not so much as a towel was taken. To say Mr. 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 don't fear him. That is to say, I don't fear him any more than I do an alcoholic. I wouldn't want either of them driving a car while zonked. But neither one is a criminal just on account of his addiction. If they steal to get drugs (or if they drive drunk), they have committed a crime. Even then, though, what they need is treatment, not mere incarceration. Too often, what they get is jail time. Mr. 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 drunken drivers but that possession of drugs was a different matter. That is a law enforcement issue, and, as the Constitution requires, a warrant is necessary. Searching every other car hardly is 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 make up about 12 percent of the population but account for 62 percent of the drug offenders in state prisons. All together, federal prisons hold almost 240,000 people convicted of drug not violent crimes, and the states hold about 200,000 more. That is an expensive proposition. There is 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. Mr. 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 hasn't materially dented our drug problem when it comes to hard-core addicts. Mr. Downey himself ought to make the movie. His only problem would be the "pitch." It is hard to say if our drug policy is a tragedy or a farce. Richard Cohen writes for the Washington Post. - --- MAP posted-by: Larry Stevens