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.