JUNKIES DON'T LEARN FROM PRISON

HAVEN'T DARRYL Strawberry and Robert Downey Jr. been given enough
"second" chances? Isn't it time to let justice do its thing and put
these two jokers away for long, long stretches?

Only the saints among us haven't been tempted to ask some version of
those questions. Only the fools among us think long-term incarceration
would do much for either of these celebrated junkies - or for the rest
of us.

Our confusion on what to do about Strawberry and Downey - both of whom
have been in trouble, repeatedly, for a variety of drug-connected
offenses - is a pretty fair reflection of our confusion regarding drug
policy in general.

At one end of the spectrum are those who say that the law is the law,
and that those who break it get the punishment they deserve.

At the other are those who, though they might punish severely any theft
or violence associated with acquiring drugs, believe the chief victim of
drug abuse is the drug abuser. What's the point of punishing a guy who's
already killing himself?

But most of us slop around in the middle. The first view ignores our
feeling that addicts are sick people for whom punishment is likely to be
useless, but the second overlooks the probability that
he's-only-doing-it-to-himself permissiveness will tempt more people into
abuse.

We want to punish in order to deter, but we understand that Strawberry
and Downey - and who knows how many scores of thousands more? - cannot
be punished or shamed into sobriety. It's almost like bringing charges
against a guy who tries to throw himself in front of a train.

Is there a rational middle ground - some reasonable place between
long-term incarceration of the ill and decriminalization? What should we
do with a Darryl Strawberry?

I put the question to Howard Simon, an official of the Partnership for a
Drug-Free America.

"Strawberry's is a tragic case," said Simon. "Here is a guy who has a
disease, plain and simple. No matter what you think about the law, we
need to find some way to have him get the help he so obviously needs. If
there is no treatment, we're not helping. That's the first thing we need
to understand: This is a very serious disease. The good news is, it's
treatable."

But treatment doesn't work for people who are not yet ready to kick
their addictions. It's our exasperation with people who, like Strawberry
and Downey, keep going through the cycle of abuse, discovery, remorse,
treatment and abuse again that makes us want to stop the game and toss
them in jail. Listen to Simon:

"Sometimes cancers recur. Sometimes cancer patients don't follow their
doctor's orders. But that doesn't mean we're supposed to throw people on
the scrap heap. It costs too much - from their point of view, obviously,
but also from ours, including financially. A Rand Corp. study says every
dollar you spend on treatment saves you seven dollars down the road, in
crime and other costs, including the cost of incarceration."

He'd not only make treatment widely available. For people like Downey
and Strawberry, he might coerce treatment.

"Treatment is great, fantastic, and I hope the nation gets behind it.

"But prevention is even better. The people who say - as the Lindesmith
Foundation's Ethan Nadelmann said the other day - that you can't achieve
a drug-free society, so you shouldn't try, have got it wrong. You can't
achieve a cancer-free society, either, but don't tell researchers they
should stop looking for ways to stop cancers from occurring in the first
place."

That is the Partnership's role in the drug wars. This organization of
media and communications professionals was founded in 1987 with the
simple premise that if you can use media to sell things, you can use
media to unsell things - including drug use.

"There may not be much we can do about a Strawberry or a Downey," said
Simon, the Partnership's associate director of public affairs. "For
those guys, drug use is really not a choice. What we try to do is help
kids in their teens to reject drugs while it is still a choice, and for
that they need both information and encouragement in making good
choices."

It is, of course, what we do in the case of tobacco. We promote social
sanctions against smoking, publish the health horror stories, develop
treatment protocols and pass laws against sales to minors. What we don't
do is put nicotine addicts in jail.