Downey Gets Sympathy That Isn’t Shown to Other Abusers

The moment the news hit that ill-fated actor Robert Downey Jr. had been busted again for drugs, many Hollywood film and TV executives quickly rallied to his defense. Television producer Norman Lear flatly stated that Downey needed treatment, not jail. The producers of Fox’s “Ally McBeal,” the series in which Downey appears, praised him for his work and said they had no intention of dumping him before he finished work on two more episodes of the show.

This circle-the-wagons and defend-our-own attitude of many in Hollywood toward Downey is not surprising, or new. Despite several well-publicized busts for drug use and weapons possession charges, Downey’s stock never dropped in the industry. Indeed, the more he got busted, the more producers and directors stampeded to get him back in front of a camera.

The compassion they showed for Downey is certainly understandable. Downey desperately needs help--long and sustained help--and Lear is absolutely right in saying that jailing him won’t give him that help.

But thousands more, like Downey, abuse drugs. And they are also desperately in need of public compassion and a long-term treatment program to kick their drug habit. Yet I don’t hear the Hollywood luminaries who plead for help for Downey also plead that they be treated and not jailed. The big difference is that these drug abusers aren’t high-profile, bankable screen commodities. They are mostly poor and, in far too many cases, black and Latino. Unlike Downey, they won’t be released on minimal bail or be cheered for any efforts they make to try to clean up their lives.

There are also two other potential dangers in Hollywood’s laissez-faire attitude toward Downey’s drug woes.

The first is that by publicly expressing unreserved sympathy for Downey, Hollywood reinforces the notion that there is one standard for drug abuse by the rich and the famous, and another for the poor and unknown. Thousands of poor people are currently incarcerated in California prisons for minor drug-related offenses. A sizable number of them were sentenced under California’s rigid three-strikes law, which mandates a 25-year-to-life sentence for three felony offenses, drug possession being the most common of their crimes. In theory, Downey could have been prosecuted under this law but wasn’t. Yet thousands of others were, and again the overwhelming majority of them are black and Latino.

The second danger is that the uncritical indulgence of Downey by many Hollywood luminaries could trigger backlash to the growing public willingness to adopt a more sane and enlightened attitude toward the handling of the nation’s drug problem. Such a backlash could jeopardize the present efforts by the Congressional Black Caucus to push Congress to eliminate the gaping racial disparities in the drug sentencing laws. These laws mandate severe sentences for petty drug crimes.

It could also strengthen the case made by opponents of Proposition 36--the recently passed initiative that mandates treatment, not jail, for nonviolent, first-time drug users--that it is an ill-conceived measure that will lead to more drug use and crime. They insist that a policy prescribing treatment rather than jail encourages drug abusers to thumb their noses at the courts and the law--and thereby puts the public at greater risk.

Many health professionals and law enforcement officials now agree that the nation’s current drug policy that relies on jails and not treatment is bad policy. They also agree that the best way to change our bad drug policy into good public policy is not to build more lockup facilities and pass even tougher drug laws, but to shift funding from prisons to programs for drug education, treatment and prevention. Unfortunately, Downey could serve as the poster boy for those hard-liners who want to undo that move in the right direction.

This is certainly not what those in Hollywood who go to bat for Downey intend. They genuinely want to see him get the right kind of help he needs to clean himself up for good. And he should, but so should others in the same predicament. And Hollywood should raise its voice in support of them as well.