GOOD SENSE IS A CASUALTY OF THE WAR ON DRUGS

Just as Robert Downey Jr. gets busted in Palm Springs, Playboy announces
that its January edition will feature an interview with New Mexico's
Republican Gov. Gary Johnson, whose views on drugs must gladden the hearts
of Cheech and Chong.

Meanwhile, George Soros has been investing some of his considerable fortune
in a campaign to liberalize drug laws in various states and has racked up
several successes, notably the passage this month of Proposition 36 in
California, which prescribes treatment rather than jail on first or second
conviction for simple possession.

Even Louisiana, which throws people in prison at a rate unmatched anywhere
on the planet, has set up drug courts that offer offenders a chance to get
clean. New Orleans District Attorney Harry Connick, hardly the
mollycoddling type, concedes that it makes sense to have "something
different available for those people who want to be rehabilitated."

Clearly, the times, they are changing, perhaps because America is growing
more compassionate, but more likely because taxpayers have noticed that
prisons cost an awful lot of money.

The times may not be changing quickly enough, however, for reason to
prevail in Downey's case. He is already well known to the criminal justice
system and had only been out of prison for three months when a snitch
directed police to the Merv Griffin Resort where Downey was found alone in
his room with a stash of cocaine and methamphetamine.

He told the cops he was tired after working long hours on the TV series
"Ally McBeal," which he is credited with rescuing from the doldrums since
he got out of the pen. Chances are that he won't do many more episodes of
that show and will have to cancel plans for a stage production of "Hamlet"
in January.

Putting Downey back behind bars will serve no obvious purpose, for that, as
he has already demonstrated, is no cure for an addiction, and he poses no
danger to anyone but himself. The same could be said for countless junkies
in prisons all over the country, and perhaps it shouldn't make any
difference that Downey is "a great, great talent and a very sensitive man,"
as Dennis Hopper put it.

Hopper has empirical reasons to "feel sorry for this terrible addiction,"
but you don't have to be familiar with drugs to conclude that feeling sorry
for Downey is the only decent reaction. It would take a mean spirit to
rejoice in the prospect of his being locked up again.

Downey was "very cooperative," the cops said, which might not have been the
case had he relaxed legally by getting plastered on whiskey.

The war on drugs has generated plenty of public hysteria but has been a
colossal failure. The war, declared by President Nixon in 1972, had a
budget of $1 billion a year by 1980, when 50,000 Americans were doing time
for nonviolent drug offenses.

This year, the budget is $18 billion, POWs number 400,000 and you can find
any drug you want on streets all over the country.

In his Playboy interview, Johnson says he is glad that his critics brand
him a Libertarian, because he does indeed believe that "you can't tell
people how to live."

The Libertarian view is that government in America was instituted for the
sole purpose of protecting the rights of citizens, including their right to
be left alone so long as they not harming others. That may be a logical
reading of the Constitution, but, unfortunately for the likes of Downey,
the Libertarians seem unlikely to win a presidential election any time
soon.

Johnson once told some kids that he used to smoke marijuana, suffered no
ill effects and thought it "kind of cool," although he has since abjured
it. He is convinced nevertheless that, "If we legalized all drugs across
the board, we would have a better situation than we have today."

Maybe, but that is obviously not going to happen. Johnson's views are a
long way from mainstream.

The mainstream does, however, appear receptive to the proposition that
mindlessly locking up nonviolent drug offenders costs huge amounts of money
and does no good. Arizona, which in 1996 became the first state to
substitute treatment for jail, reports encouraging results and Proposition
36 is expected to save California taxpayers $200 million a year.

They may still have to pick up the tab for the unfortunate Downey, however.