Drug Abuse Takes Its Toll, Regardless of Fame or Income

Earl Ofari Hutchinson’s comments on Robert Downey’s drug problem are wise words indeed (“Downey Gets Sympathy That Isn’t Shown to Other Abusers,” Dec. 18), but I wonder how much help many would really need if society let drug users alone and didn’t try to prevent them from using or abusing, so long as they posed no threat to others.

In other words: Decriminalize the use and abuse. Most drug users (not all), given time and left alone, will quit on their own. Others will seek help when they are tired of being addicted.

It’s our punitive-based, prohibitionist, paternalistic policies that create the “drug problem” for society and for the user/abuser.

GERALD M. SUTLIFF

Emeryville

In his article, Hutchinson takes up the cause of the poor and the incarcerated who did not receive the same kind of sympathetic response or treatment that Robert Downey Jr. has. He argues that those who are not in the spotlight or members of the “star club” are the ones who remain victims to an outdated attitude toward addiction.

May I remind him, and all others who believe that it is only the wealthy and well-known who receive “compassion” and long-term treatment programs, of the recent tragic death of the very talented jockey Chris Antley [the victim of an apparent homicide] as one example of the countless “superstars” whose problems with substance abuse never get treatment by virtue of their very membership in the group that Ofari seems to think is so “privileged.”

RUTH KRAMER ZIONY

Los Angeles