JUST TREATING THE WOUNDED WON'T WIN WAR

Last year when actor Robert Downey Jr. was sentenced to three years in
prison for probation violations, he told a judge that his drug addiction
was "like I've got a shotgun in my mouth, with my finger on the trigger,
and I like the taste of the gun metal."

As bizarre as that sounds, it was one of the best explanations you'll hear
of addiction - defined by the National Institute on Drug Abuse as "chronic
relapsing disease." It also explains why Downey, who was released from
jail in August to turn his life and career around, had a relapse
Thanksgiving weekend in California and was arrested on drug charges.

Downey's arrest came just weeks after voters in California overwhelmingly
endorsed Proposition 36, the "treatment instead of incarceration" ballot
initiative that aims to divert nonviolent drug-possession offenders from
jail and prison into treatment programs. Ethan A. Nadelmann, executive
director of the Lindesmith Center-Drug Policy Foundation, a drug policy
reform organization, wrote in the Los Angeles Times why Prop 36 and similar
measures are gaining momentum:

"Clearly, more and more citizens realize that the drug war has failed and
are looking for new approaches. The votes also suggest that there are
limits to what people will accept in the name of the war on drugs. ...
Americans don't approve of people using heroin or cocaine, but neither
do they want them locked up without first offering them opportunities to
get their lives together outside prison walls."

BUT HOW FAR should society go to save individuals from themselves and their
destructive behavior - even when they are more of a menace to themselves
than society? Last year when a judge sentenced Downey to prison, he said
he was doing it "to save his life." But just three months out, he's back
to his old habits.

Additionally, Downey has had access to treatment and enjoyed strong support
from friends and employers in his profession. The same goes for baseball's
Darryl Strawberry. They are proof that if incarceration is not the answer,
treatment is no panacea, either.

"Relapses are a regular part of drug addiction," a counselor at one of
Downey's treatment centers told USA Today. A psychologist in the same
article said that when researchers began documenting drug addiction rates,
"they were astounded to find 75 percent to 80 percent relapse after one year."

Still, Californians are willing to give treatment a try. Treatment costs
about $ 4,000 a year per person, while a year in prison for a drug user
costs about $ 20,000, and it is estimated that as many as 24,000
nonviolent drug-possession offenders there could be diverted to drug
treatment instead of jail. It's worth a try.

CRITICS OF THE WAR on drugs, which include people as ideologically opposed
as economist Milton Friedman and consumer advocate Ralph Nader, have
called it our domestic Vietnam - long, costly and unsuccessful, with the
major difference being that in Vietnam, we eventually acknowledged
the futility of our efforts. They say that instead it has become a war on
people.

Indeed, as Ethan Nadelmann notes, since 1980, the number of people in state
prisons for drug offenses has climbed more than tenfold, with most there
for possession, not trafficking. Nearly 60 percent of all inmates in
federal prison are there on drug charges.

But the stakes in this war are higher, involving lives ruined by addiction,
babies being born addicted, and the economic and spiritual destruction of
entire communities because of the violence associated with drug
trafficking. So we may have to change strategy, but we shouldn't withdraw.

Fighting the war does not have to be a limited choice between treatment and
law enforcement. The two have to go together, because weakening drug
enforcement mechanisms will lead to fewer individuals both seeking and
receiving drug treatment. And I don't know of a war that has ever been won
by simply treating the wounded.

Joseph H. Brown is a Tribune editorial writer.