CELEBRITY OR NOT, DRUG USERS DON'T BELONG IN PRISON

Sometime soon, Darryl Strawberry, the once great baseball player,
could end up serving time. As a three time probation violator, his
latest drug binge (he ran away from his court ordered drug
rehabilitation program in March) could cost him his freedom.

The same fate could await Robert Downey Jr., the talented actor whose
starring role in the hit TV show "Ally McBeal" could not restrain his
self destructive tendencies. He was arrested in California last week,
apparently stoned. That came just days before he was to appear in
court for an alleged Thanksgiving drug binge. Both arrests jeopardize
his parole; he was released in August after a one year stint in a
California prison on drug related charges. Strawberry and Downey have
both wasted their talents, waylaid or destroyed promising careers and
abused their loved ones. But neither man is a menace to society. Why
put them behind bars? Why not a measured punishment that fits the
crime: continued court ordered treatment, random drug testing,
electronic monitoring and increased restrictions on their social and
professional lives?

It may be that no judge would feel sympathy for highly paid and
pampered stars who broke every rule, abused every amnesty and flouted
the law. Certainly, Strawberry and Downey deserve no special
consideration because they are celebrities.

There should be no mercy granted to Darryl Strawberry, baseball
player, that would not be granted to Darryl Williams, WalMart clerk,
no break given to Robert Downey Jr., actor, that would not be given to
Robert Wayne Dennis, plumber.

But the same question applies to self-destructive substance abusers of
every social station: Is society served by putting them in jail? Why
does our criminal justice system treat drug addicts the same way it
treats car thieves and bank robbers?

If you have ever watched a life waste away in the grip of addiction,
you know that narcotics are dangerous substances that rob the user
first of judgment, finally of humanity. Heroin, cocaine and a host of
other illegal substances can ruin lives, wreck families, breed crime
and poison whole communities.

Because those drugs are so dangerous, we have fought them with a
variety of aggressive and punitive measures, from interdiction abroad
to incarceration at home. Unfortunately, this "war on drugs" creates
the same havoc it was meant to prevent; it ruins lives, wrecks
families and breeds crime. It is a classic burn-the-village-to-save-it
strategy.

Incarceration of drug addicts deprives them of drug treatment (little
treatment is available in most prisons) and isolates them from family
support. It takes up precious prison beds that ought to be reserved
for genuine societal threats: rapists, murderers and drug kingpins,
for example. Worse yet, this punitive strategy makes criminals out of
thousands of Americans who have done nothing worse than torture
themselves and their loved ones.

Interdiction, for its part, burns up billions of dollars that could be
spent instead on drug treatment, drug courts and prevention programs.
Attempts to dry up the drug supply also entangle the United States in
questionable relationships with foreign governments, such as the
U.S.Peruvian agreement that led to the recent mistaken shoot-down of a
small airplane carrying American missionaries.

If this incarceration-interdiction strategy were working, its high
costs might make sense. But it's a miserable failure. Significant
numbers of Americans still use illegal drugs; even as the crack
epidemic fades, heroin and Ecstasy burst into popularity. Meanwhile,
narcotics continue to flow past our porous borders by the tons;
pressure on the Peruvians just increases the flow from Colombia or
Brazil.

Alcoholics Anonymous, the classic model of substance-abuse treatment,
says the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over
again and expecting a different result. By that definition, our "war
on drugs" is insane.