DOWNEY'S ARREST SHOWS FUTILITY OF SPENDING MORE TO FIGHT DRUGS

Robert Downey Jr. is described in the Washington Post as "one of his
generation's most brilliant actors" - a ubiquitous cliche, along with
"comic genius" - and like many "brilliant" people, his intelligence has
failed him in other realms of life.

Having been released in August after a year spent in a tough California
prison for possession and use of drugs, he was arrested last week at a
hotel in Palm Springs. An anonymous tipster telephoned police to check
Downey's room for drugs and guns, and there the cops found cocaine,
methamphetamines and no guns, but a manifestly zonked-out Downey. He was
handcuffed, transported to jail, and bailed out the following morning.

He faces a court hearing two days after Christmas, and because he is a
repeat offender and parole violator, is likely to be returned to prison.

Hollywood being Hollywood, the predominant reaction to this story has been
practical: Downey's career is in jeopardy, we are told, perhaps finished.
It may well be. One of his generation's most brilliant actors is in the
middle of a guest appearance on TV's Ally McBeal and was about to make a
movie with Billy Crystal and Catherine Zeta-Jones. This is not the stuff of
great art, to be sure, but it does suggest that Downey is capable of
functioning in show business.

The two remaining episodes of Ally McBeal are now being filmed, but if
Downey is in prison next year, Zeta-Jones will have to find another leading
man.

I should point out, for the record, that I once encountered Downey at a
political convention and found him thoroughly distasteful. But it is
impossible to take any guilty pleasure in observing his downward spiral.

He is clearly sick, out of touch with reality and headed toward very hard
times, or disaster.

This is not an unfamiliar story in Hollywood. I used to have a fascination
with an early silent-film star named Wallace Reid, who died in 1923 after a
long and well-publicized struggle with narcotics.

Rummaging around in the Reid file at the Los Angeles Times (where I was
employed at the time), I came across voluminous reporters' notes about the
problems movie studios were having keeping dope dealers away from the
actors and actresses.

That was 80 years ago. Drugs have blighted many lives and careers in
subsequent decades, and as Downey's case suggests, will continue to do so.

It is entirely possible, it is entirely likely, that nothing can be done
about Downey's problem.

In that sense, drug addiction resembles alcoholism: Some recover their
lives, and others do not. Accordingly, it's hard to tell the difference
between alcoholism and drug addiction - except, of course, that the
possession and consumption of booze is not unlawful.

Yet drug addicts are not just treated the same way as criminal predators
(Downey shared prison space with Charles Manson, among others) but in
roughly comparable numbers as well. Between the state and federal prison
systems, there are now over a half-million drug offenders in America's jails.

Some of these, no doubt, are pushers and big-time dealers, but the vast
majority are small-time consumers, or addicts like Downey.

The rationale for putting Manson behind bars is evident enough, but who are
we protecting from Downey? The only victim of his behavior is Downey
himself. Obviously, when people drive under the influence of alcohol, or
are drunk and disorderly in public, they are breaking the law. By the same
token, when an addict commits a crime to feed his habit, he needs to face
sanctions. But there is no evidence that Downey robbed anyone except
himself to acquire drugs, and his conduct in that Palm Springs hotel
intruded on no one.

The solution is not to treat alcohol in the same way we approach drugs -
that was tried from 1919 to 1933 - but to ponder the lessons of the failure
of Prohibition. For the past three decades, we have been waging a "war on
drugs" in America, and after interdiction, K-12 propaganda in the schools,
the expenditure of tens of billions of federal dollars, and a doubling and
tripling of national prison space, what have we to show for it? The problem
is not just persistent, but probably permanent.

There are no simple, comprehensive solutions, and spending more money isn't
the answer.

Treatment works for some addicts, but not all: Downey, for example, seems
to defy all attempts to be cured.

But just as we live with the fact that Americans consume alcohol in varying
degrees - from ladies sipping sherry to derelicts in the gutter - it seems
reasonable to suppose that drugs might be comparably tolerated.

On the whole, people would be better off if they didn't drink or take drugs.

But people, as it turns out, are only human beings; and tossing them into
prison for their appetites is futile.

Philadelphia Newspapers Inc.