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.