Can Robert Downey, Jr. Be Saved – And Who Cares?
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by Reverend Michael McGee
A sermon delivered on January 20, 2002
Unitarian Universalist Church of Arlington, VA

I imagine most of you have seen the film, “Traffic,” by now. Perhaps some of you watched it on Friday night here at the church and joined in the discussion that followed. If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend that you rent it.

The film peels away the many layers of the drug crisis by telling three separate stories. One story shows Michael Douglas who plays an Ohio state Supreme Court justice who is appointed drug czar by the president. He quickly becomes enmeshed in the highly complex enormity of the war on drugs while at the same time discovering that his daughter has become addicted to cocaine and heroin.

In the second story, a society wife of a well-to-do business man is shocked when her husband is busted for being a cocaine importer. His arrest forces her to make a decision to either help her husband or remain a bystander.

In the third story, a Tijuana cop gets caught up in a battle between two Mexican drug cartels. He and his partner are both more or less good guys who can't avoid getting swept up by one side. When the cop finds out he's being used, he has to figure out a way to save himself and his partner.

The three stories all intersect at certain points, each conveying in tragic ways the maze of complexities and problems caused by drugs in America and the dogged determinism and yet utter futility of all efforts to control them.

The most profound revelation of the film is that the participants in the drug trade -- the wretched junkies, the greedy drug dealers, the corrupt cops -- are not "them." They are often us and those we love. One of the most poignant scenes in the movie is when the drug czar, who finally decides to quit his job after battling against drugs both nationally and with his daughter says these words, "How [can] you wage war on your own family?"

This is the ultimate tragedy of the film. “Traffic” brings home the fact that the War on Drugs is not only a war, but it is a civil war and a family war, with real casualties and real prisoners, and it is a war that touches the lives of every American, as well as many others around the world.

Yesterday our church sponsored a community forum on Alternatives To The War on Drugs. Our own Bob Dinniston and Bob Patrick did an excellent job of organizing the forum, though unfortunately the weather kept the attendance low. I’m sure those of you who were there will agree that it was an excellent opportunity to hear some articulate professionals in the field and some of our own young people discuss not only the massive problems we must face but ways in which we can bring hope and health and wholeness to the lives of those who are victims of this plague.

The forum grew out of a Statement of Conscience passed at the annual General Assembly of the Unitarian Universalist Association in June, 2000 in which “Alternatives to the ‘War on Drugs’” was selected as an issue suggested for congregations to study and act upon during the next two years.

Let me make it clear that neither the General Assembly or the UUA is telling congregations or individuals what to believe about drugs. Representatives of all our congregations voted to present the Statement of Conscience for discussion. It is up to us to decide what the final version will be. And it is up to us to have a civil conversation about this critical issue.

This is a complex problem with no easy answers. I find myself struggling with a variety of feelings and ideas. I grew up in the 60s when drugs became rooted in our society, and I saw some of my friends seriously diminished by their drugs use. Fortunately my own experimentation was harmless -- though there are those who would disagree. But my wife, Terry, and I have been diligent about talking with our children about drugs and trying to keep them safe. I’m still unsure however what the answers are.

Those who support the War on Drugs seem to be telling us that America can arrest its way out of this crisis. They point out that heroin addiction has stabilized and the use of cocaine and marijuana has decreased. They claim that school programs like D.A.R.E. and a legalistic attitude of zero-tolerance for young offenders is working to keep our children from experimenting with drugs.

But I see a different picture. I see a war with numerous “collateral damage” as it is now called. Who are the casualties in this war? You and I know many of them – friends, co-workers, family members – and I imagine some of you are victims as well in one way or another.

And I know there are many other victims of this war who we give little thought to. Why are we not shocked that on any typical day 142 Americans will die of drug overdoses or other causes related to their abuse of illegal drugs -- which comes to more than 53,000 people a year, or about the total number of Americans killed in Vietnam?

Why are we not shocked that 1,500 Americans will be arrested and charged with selling or possessing narcotics in a typical day?

And why are we not shocked that almost a million Americans are heroin addicts and over three million are chronic cocaine users?

While our attention is riveted on the War On Terrorism, many of us are blind to the government’s War on Drugs and the impact it is having on our society. Who is winning that war? The writers of “Traffic” make it clear that we can never end the drug crisis if we keep treating it as a war.

They would agree with Dr. Walter Wink, a theology professor in New York City who writes, “The drug war is over, and we lost. We merely repeated the mistake of Prohibition. The harder we tried to stamp out this evil, the more lucrative we made it, and the more it spread. Our forcible resistance to evil simply augments it. An evil cannot be eradicated by making it more profitable.”

It’s true. The problem with the War on Drugs is that it does more harm than do the drugs themselves. As Ethan A. Nadelmann, columnist in the Los Angeles Times, writes, “U.S. drug prohibition, like alcohol Prohibition decades ago, generates extraordinary harms. It ... is responsible for creating vast underground markets, criminalizing millions of otherwise law-abiding citizens, corrupting both governments and societies at large, empowering organized criminals, increasing predatory crime, spreading disease, curtailing personal freedom, disparaging science and honest inquiry and legitimizing public policies that are both extraordinary and insidious in their racially disproportionate consequences.”

The War on Drugs is in actuality a war on minority groups. That’s why I’m talking about the “War on Drugs” on Martin Luther King, Jr. Sunday. One of the most gross racial injustices is that if you are arrested with five grams of crack the federal courts will sentence you to a mandatory five-year sentence – but you would have to have in your possession 500 grams of powdered cocaine to receive that same mandatory sentence -- 100 times the amount of crack. The difference of course is that low income and minority groups usually use crack while upscale whites can afford to use cocaine.

In a New York Times editorial, Milton Friedman, world renowned conservative economist, quotes Connecticut's director of addiction services, when he said:

"Today in this country, we incarcerate 3,109 black men for every 100,000 of them in the population. Just to give you an idea of the drama in this number, our closest competitor for incarcerating black men is South Africa. South Africa -- and this is pre-Nelson Mandela and under an overt public policy of apartheid -- incarcerated 729 black men for every 100,000. Figure this out: In the land of the Bill of Rights, we jail over four times as many black men as the only country in the world that advertised a political policy of apartheid."

I believe Dr. King, if he were alive today, would vigorously protest this injustice. He would also tell us that having 500,000 nonviolent drug offenders currently in jail and a fivefold increase in drug overdose deaths during the last 20 years is unacceptable for a civilized nation.

He would tell us that an estimated 80 million drug users and a drug trade worth more than $200 billion a year is unacceptable for an ethical society.

But what does all of this have to do with Robert Downey, Jr.? What would Dr. King have to say about this young white gifted actor who is a self-destructive drug addict?

As many of you may know, Robert Downey, Jr. was arrested three different times in 1996 for possessing illegal drugs. Then, last year, just three months after being released from prison, he was arrested again and put in jail.

My question for you is “Can Robert Downey, Jr. be saved? And who cares?” Is there any hope for someone who is addicted to drugs so badly that he is willing to throw his career and perhaps his life out the window? And why should we care about a rich white celebrity who can’t seem to enjoy life without drugs?

I do care about Robert Downey, Jr., and I do hope he can be saved, but I also appreciate that he has drawn attention – as the film “Traffic” has done – to the drug crisis in our society. He has helped us to understand that no one, whether black or white, rich or poor, deserves to be thrown into prison for being sick. He has harmed no one. And as one of his friends put it, “Jailing him is as barbaric as treating the sick with leeches.”

Why do we throw drug abusers and addicts in jail instead of providing them with the medical resources to break their addiction? Why do we ruin the lives of so many of our young people by incarcerating them for years without treatment instead of teaching them and training them in ways to avoid becoming slaves to drugs?

I’m not sure there are any reasonable answers to those questions, but I do know that the effect of our prohibition policy is that it compounds the harm to users. A user is forced to associate with criminals to get the drugs, and many become criminals themselves to finance the habit. Needles, since they are hard to get and are often shared, spread serious diseases, including AIDS. The drugs themselves are not only exorbitantly expensive but highly uncertain in quality with the result often being life-threatening toxic reaction or overdose.

So if the “War On Drugs” is a failure, as 70% of Americans believe, then what are the alternatives?

I believe our highest priority should be to protect the children. There is no doubt that drugs are dangerous, and children are extremely vulnerable to the temptations of drugs.

But we must be honest with our kids. We can’t expect a program such as D.A.R.E. which has offered its simple “Just Say No!” strategy for the last 25 years to work for most children. And in fact, studies have shown that D.A.R.E. is ineffective.

We need to provide our children with honest information about all drugs, legal and illegal, and teach them how to make rational and healthy decisions. And as one panelist said yesterday, parents need to teach their children that we are alive for a greater purpose than pure pleasure. Our purpose is to make this a better world and to give to others. That’s a responsibility for our religious community as well.

I do want you to know how impressed I was with the panel of four teenagers that discussed drug use yesterday. These young people – three of them from our church – honestly shared their difficulties in dealing with drugs in a culture where peer pressure is so pervasive. They said that drugs are readily available in their schools and that they have friends who are doing drugs. They also said that the most important factor in being able to resist drugs is the influence of loving and honest parents. So I encourage you to talk with your kids about drugs, no matter what their age, and give them your support in living a drug-free life.

Having said this, I also want to see our young people protected by laws. The use of drugs, especially those that are addictive, by our youth should be illegal. But the punishment should not be so drastic that their lives are ruined if they are arrested. And effective treatment should always be easily available and the first recourse.

A second alternative to the War on Drugs is to treat drug dependence and addiction as a health problem instead of a legal problem. I do not favor the wholesale legalization of drugs, but I do believe drug use should be decriminalized and that we should use our vast resources for prevention and treatment.

The medical community has made it clear that addiction is a medical disorder and a disease and should be treated as such. By throwing drug users in jail, usually without any effective treatment, not only is the user being victimized but so is a society that is being deprived of constructive, tax-paying citizens.

I do believe that people should be held responsible for how their actions impact upon others. Driving under the influence of any drug should be dealt with aggressively, as should any crime that is committed while using drugs.

Other than that, we need to look at all drugs as a health issue. Alcohol kills 100,000 people a year, and tobacco kills 360,000 people a year. These are by far the most dangerous drugs in our society, and they should be treated as such.

Doesn’t it strike you as crazy that these drugs far exceed all illegal drugs as sources of death, disease, and dysfunction, and yet not only is there no war against these alcohol and tobacco, but there’s barely a skirmish. Did you hear that alcohol commercials are making a comeback on television? And U.S. tobacco companies are aggressively marketing cigarettes around the world. We need to put the highest priority on prevention and easily accessible and affordable treatment for all addictions.

How heartless that the Justice Department will not even allow marijuana to be used for the alleviation of pain for those with serious and terminal diseases. I was amazed that in the midst of the War On Terrorism this fall that the Attorney General suddenly led an attack against states that democratically voted for the medical use of marijuana. So much for states rights! So much for compassion!

A third alternative to the war on drugs is for our government to stop fighting that war in foreign countries. As Milton Friedman writes, “Our drug policy has led to thousands of deaths and enormous loss of wealth in countries like Colombia, Peru and Mexico, and has undermined the stability of their governments.”

The reason we are interfering in other nations, explains Friedman, is “because we cannot enforce our laws at home. If we did, there would be no market for imported drugs. There would be no Cali cartel. The foreign countries would not have to suffer the loss of sovereignty involved in letting our ‘advisers’ and troops operate on their soil, search their vessels and encourage local militaries to shoot down their planes. They could run their own affairs, and we, in turn, could avoid the diversion of military forces from their proper function.”

We need to ask ourselves if any policy, whatever the motivation, can be moral if it leads to widespread corruption, imprisons millions, is racist in its enforcement, decimates our inner cities, ruins the lives of misguided and vulnerable individuals and brings death and destruction to foreign countries.

There are alternatives to this devastating war on drugs our government is perpetrating on its own people. I’ve suggested a few, but I hope all of you will enter into a civil conversation about what we can do to end this war and to bring peace and justice to our land. And then I hope you will become involved, as parents, as citizens, as religious individuals, in bringing about solutions that will restore us as a people.

In the words of Dr. King, “The measure of a person is not where [you] stand in moments of comfort and convenience, but where [you] stand at times of challenge and controversy.” This is one of those times.

Amen.