DOWNER- BUT IS ROBERT DOWNEY JR CHANGING THE WAY THE MEDIA LOOKS AT DRUG
ADDICTION?

Like Darryl Strawberry before him, actor Robert Downey, Jr. is testing the
limits of America's tolerance for relapse to addiction. But this time- and
in the aftermath of the success of a ballot initiative to give addicts
several chances at treatment before jail sentences can be invoked in
California-tolerance may be beginning to trump moralizing, and may well
signal a readiness for a real debate on drug policy.

Voters may have been ambivalent about their presidential choices this year,
but they weren't indecisive about the failure of the war on drugs. Five of
seven initiatives to reform drug laws passed. Two new states (Nevada and
Colorado) joined the six states and the District of Columbia which have
already voted to legalize of the medical use of marijuana; two(Oregon and
Utah) supported restrictions on police powers to seize property linked to
drug crimes. The two propositions that failed (Alaska and Massachusetts)
included clemency for drug dealers, which the public wasn't prepared to
accept.

But the California initiative, which passed 61-39 percent despite opposition
from prosecutors, judges, prison guards and almost all politicians, is
probably the most important and belatedly, the media seems to be picking up
on this change in climate.

After his relapse this spring, Darryl Strawberry was called "pathetic,"
"maddening" and "despicable" by baseball commentator Tim McCarver. A
Washington Post column by Richard Cohen remarked on the level of outrage by
fans and commentators and concluded that baseball had failed him by not
forcing him into long-term lockdown treatment.

A 1997 editorial in the Los Angeles Times responded to a judge sentencing
Downey to prison time for an earlier relapse by saying, "Jail time was the
option that should have been taken months ago as it surely would have been
for any ordinary citizen... What kind of message is sent when youths who
idolize stars see that drug arrests do not even interfere with movie
careers?" An article that paper ran on his 1997 arrest bore the headline
"Saved By The Judge."

Downey's latest relapse, however, seems to have occurred in a climate of
greater sympathy-one that was perhaps presaged by the comments of drug
reform financier George Soros' spokesman and advocate Ethan Nadelmann in a
San Francisco Chronicle column about Strawberry (3/26/00). Nadelmann posed a
question which seems to have struck voters this fall: "What is the point of
punishment? Almost everything we've learned about drug use and addiction is
that a good job and a supportive environment are crucial in enabling people
to say no to drugs, or at least to keep their drug use under control... Why
don't they leave the guy alone?"

In a Washington Post article (11/28/00), Sharon Waxman quotes
writer/director James Toback expressing a similar thought about Downey,
"He's a sweet guy who never did harm to anyone except himself. He's been
doing drugs for 20 years and functioning for 20 years and in those 20 years
there have been hundreds of people who have been getting high constantly and
behaved very destructively and have not been arrested. Robert's real problem
is he gets caught."

The coverage of these relapses reflects a set of contradictory ideas that
hasn't yet gelled into coherent arguments. The media is still bound by a set
of stereotypes through which it frames drug problems but chronic relapsers
like Downey and Strawberry explode them by illuminating their flaws.

Reporters might wish to start questioning the following assumptions if they
want to make sense of this issue. First, almost every news story about drugs
assumes that one addict can speak for all addicts, even for all casual drug
users. When Downey, Jr. was freed in August, he was presumed to represent
the addict's prison experience when he told Details, "I wouldn't wish my
experience on an enemy. But there was value in it." But few ask: "if that's
the case, why did he relapse?" And, "if prison is valuable, why is it such a
revolving door for addicts?"

Almost all of the coverage of the treatment ballot initiative in California,
Proposition 36, contained similar quotes from addicts who said that the
measure would increase drug use by freeing them from an immediate
incarceration threat. Only after editorializing based on these positions and
the self-interested opposition from prison guards and prosecutors did the
California press learn that voters saw the issue quite differently. Not one
article contained evidence that a reporter had asked Prop. 36 opponents-many
of whom treat both alcoholics and addicts and say they both have the same
disease of addiction-why they need force for one group, but not the other.

Futher, in no area is one considered an expert on a disease, and the
behavior of fellow sufferers, simply because one has fallen victim to it.
This privileging of addicts as experts affects policies by perpetuating an
ideology about addiction taught to addicts in treatment which bears little
relation to what recent research has discovered. An addict whose only
education is his addiction and recovery treatment is no more an expert on
his illness than a heart transplant patient is on his. What is true for one
is not necessarily true for all- and while the addict's perspective is
important to help humanize the issue, unless it is informed by research, it
cannot be considered a generalizeable point of view. The condition of drug
addiction is too diverse.

Furthermore, the public has clearly decided that jail doesn't deter users-
and is hugely expensive to boot. Send them to treatment instead, they say.
But the media doesn't ask: if addiction is a disease as the treatment
providers claim, why is jail and coercion in the mix at all?

To have a sane argument about drug policy, the media needs to consider the
Robert Downey, Jr.'s and Darryl Strawberry's of the world who repeatedly
fail treatment, perhaps because they simply aren't ready to stop using. The
treatment providers have few answers for them other than keep forcing them
back into care, even when it clearly isn't helping.

Should we treat drug addicts as we treat alcoholics and smokers? Should we
lock them up even though it doesn't deter them or others? The debate won't
progress without clear thinking and a decision to ruthlessly question
conventional wisdom-something that Californians seem to have begun to do.
The media needs to catch up.