SHEEN PITS HIS NAME, HIS PAST AGAINST PROP.36 SACRAMENTO -- Actor Martin Sheen was cracking jokes and signing autographs for dozens of giddy fans of TV's "The West Wing" on Friday when the mood suddenly sobered. "Can you write, 'Congratulations on your two years of sobriety?' " asked one woman as she sought an autograph for her husband. "I've been clean 19 years this November," another woman later told him. "Now you're bragging," joked Sheen, who said he has been sober nearly 12 years. Sheen shuttled from Sacramento to Oakland to Santa Monica on Friday, rallying opposition to a Nov. 7 ballot measure that would require treatment instead of prison or jail for many drug users. He also will appear in an opposition ad that will air during Wednesday's "West Wing" episode. He told reporters and fans gathered outside the Sacramento County courthouse that Prop. 36 would actually hurt treatment programs. "It takes away the leverage that a judge has to get an addict's attention," Sheen said. The proposition would require judges to sentence first-or second-time drug offenders to treatment - rather than prison - if they were caught with a stash small enough to be deemed for personal use. Sheen is no stranger to the issue. He said it took several jail stints to prompt him seek to help for his alcoholism. And he turned in his own son, "Spin City" star Charlie Sheen, after a May 1998 drug overdose sent him to the hospital. "I have a measure of credibility with my own addiction to alcohol," Sheen said in an interview. "More importantly, it gives me an understanding of what's at stake with Proposition 36, how much chaos it will cause if it's passed, and how many people will be overlooked, not the least of which could be alcoholics." The chairwoman of the pro-36 movement, drug-law reformer Gretchen Burns Bergman of San Diego, accused Sheen of "turning his back on thousands of poor and middle-class kids" in a statement. Others, particularly Sheen's Hollywood associates, have accused Sheen, 60, of abandoning his usually progressive views. Sheen said that's because they haven't read the proposition's fine print, which he believes could lead to the decriminalization of hard drugs. "All my liberal friends, they're all over me - 'Oh, what are you doing here? Are you against rehabilitation for drug addicts? Look at you're own life,' " Sheen said. But he said courts must be tough on addicts, just as he had no choice but to turn in his son after the overdose. Charlie Sheen was ordered to complete a rehabilitation program as a condition of his probation on an unrelated charge. "You have to love your children enough to risk their wrath by telling them the truth," Sheen said. "We're two adults, and we've both come through an extraordinary recovery in our lives. The miracle of recovery is very present; it's the most important thing in our lives and in our relationship - - we can relate as father and son, as fellow brothers in a community; you know, in a 12-step program." Sheen lauded his son's willingness to be upfront about his reputation as a womanizer and drug user in his new TV show.
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