Robert Downey Jr. is to Drugs what Rosa Parks was to Sitting on Buses

California recently passed a law giving all drug users mandatory rehab rather than a mandatory jail cell. This is seen as a great step forward but it's more a step sideways that doesn't address the real problem. Who's to say that everybody using drugs needs rehab? How would you feel about a law saying everybody caught with alcohol got mandatory AA meetings? Personally I'd be against it because I've been to AA meetings and they suck. Don't need 'em. I'm not an alcoholic by any stretch of the imagination. I have an occasional drink, I get silly and turn into Robin Williams. The kids love it. They wish I would drink MORE. Then I fall asleep. No problem. Anybody suggesting I need AA can go fuck themselves.

The criteria for a drug intervention shouldn't just be getting caught. Anybody can get caught. The criteria is whether the person is IN TROUBLE. If they're getting high and driving their car or beating their kids or missing meetings or falling behind in their work or destroying their relationships. If none of these properties exist, then guess what? You're guilty of being one of the majority of consumers who can actually handle their intoxicants. The vast majority of drinkers don't need AA and the vast majority of drug users not only don't need jail, they don't even need rehab.

Robert Downey Jr. is one of them. Drugs aren't ruining his life, inappropriate intervention is. Without the cops, he's doing just fine. Anybody watching Ally McBeal has to truthfully say that he's not only doing his work but doing a brilliant job at it. The scene where he sang Joni Mitchell's River was outstanding. He's one of our finest living actors.

Everybody's talking as though there's something wrong with him, as though he's destroying his own life. He's not. His life is being destroyed by outside forces trying to convince him that he's doing something wrong. He's not. There's nothing wrong with consuming ANYTHING as long as you're one of the people who can handle it.

There's nothing wrong with breaking the law either if the law is corrupt and undeserving of credibility. It's called civil disobedience. Rosa Parks wasn't allowed to sit at the front of the bus because she was black. She couldn't help being black any more than Robert Downey Jr. can help liking drugs. To prosecute either one of them displays an equal amount of prejudice, one towards the color of someone's skin, another towards someone's consumption habits. Both attitudes are equally irrational. Why should the color of your skin have any influence at all upon where you're allowed to sit on a bus? Why would anybody care what someone else consumes, especially when they do it in private and it has no influence whatsoever on their outside behavior?

Drug users are the current niggers of the world. Why is the assumption that all drug users are inferior any more rational than the assumption that all black people are inferior? They're both oversimplifications that shrivel and decay in the light of day. There are black people and drug users who aren't inferior at all.

But, I hear you cry, people have no choice about the color of their skin. They DO have a choice as to what they consume. Do they? Think about something you like to consume, say broccoli. Do you have a choice in the matter? Is there any way someone can convince you that you don't like broccoli? No. We're not in control of our tastes any more than we're in control of our sexual preferences. Ever have someone of the same sex try to convince you to have sex with them when you're only attracted to the opposite sex? Did it work? Not likely. If you don't like broccoli, no amount of shoving it down your throat is going to change your mind, and if you do like broccoli, making broccoli illegal isn't going to change your mind. Same with cocaine.

No amount of law enforcement is ever going to convince Robert Downey Jr. that he doesn't like cocaine, any more than law enforcement was able to convince Rosa Parks she wasn't black. If cocaine consumption was physically destroying Downey's body, like cholesterol is destroying mine, maybe he'd be convinced to change his consumption habits, but that doesn't seem to be the case. The only harm cocaine seems to be doing to Robert Downey Jr. is the self-righteous moralizing of the public and the despicable attitudes of local law enforcement.

Nothing could be more clear than the fact that Robert Downey Jr. is one of those who can handle their drugs. Sure, he had trouble in the past, driving while intoxicated, entering the wrong house, but he's apparently learned his lesson. This time he got high alone in a hotel room. He wasn't driving. He wasn't breaking and entering. He wasn't doing anything. Had any sort of intervention been in the works among his friends and fellow workers? Apparently not. Why? Because they couldn't tell there was a problem. Why? Because there wasn't a problem. He wasn't getting high on the set. He was hitting his marks and remembering his lines. He wasn't beating his kids or firing guns in the air. His drug use, which seemed to consist of simply running away to a hotel for a weekend, seems to have had no effect whatsoever upon his personal or professional life. He doesn't need rehab. He doesn't need anything other than to be left alone.

Unfortunately, that's not the argument he can make in front of the judge today at his arraignment. To a judge, the simple fact that he got caught means he gets jail or rehab, despite the overwhelming evidence that neither will do any good. The only reasonable thing to do is dismiss the case because it's the prosecution that's doing the harm to society if we're to be deprived of one of our finest artists by sending him to jail. Let him consume whatever the hell he wants.

For my definitive rant against the drug war, you are invited to read Inanimate Objects.