Robert Downey Jr., in accepting his Golden Globe award Sunday night, noted that producer David E. Kelley compared writing for Downey's appearances on Ally McBeal to having a new toy to play with. "I'll try very hard not to be sent back to the factory," Downey said, alluding to his time spent in a drug rehab prison. While Downey is picking up awards and nominations for his acting (he's also up for an Emmy), his legal troubles continue, indicative of the horrors and hypocrisies of our unceasing war on people who use the wrong drugs.

The U.S. currently houses over 2 million people in its prisons, more per capita than almost any other country on the globe. Up to 60% of those are incarcerated for non-violent drug offenses. When Californians voted last fall to mandate treatment rather than incarceration for petty drug crimes, they were voting with their hearts as well as their heads. Treatment is not only more cost effective than incarceration; it's thought to be more humane. Many were appalled to learn that Downey's so-called drug treatment took place in a prison. That is just one of the many of the harsh realities of the drug war illuminated by Downey's case.

First is the break up of families. An estimated 750,000 children in this country have a parent in prison, largely as a result of long sentences for drug crimes. For his crimes and the fact that his recovery has included relapsing into drug taking (as is often the case), Downey has been denied visitation with his six-year-old son. The damage this will do to an innocent boy, and to his father, is without measure. Vanity Fair reported that upon visiting his father in prison, Elijah asked his mother, "Is daddy a bad man?" (I would answer, if you judge him on his work and the joy and enlightenment he has brought to others, he is a very good man. If you judge him on the chemicals he ingests, he is a very bad man. Our current measure of a man has officially sunk to a new low--the contents of one's urine in a drug test.)

Another fact brought to light by the Downey saga is the common usage in drug cases of the confidential informant. His latest arrest is highly suspect, based on a tip from an unnamed source, who could very easily have set him up. Often drug defendants are given lighter sentences, or none at all, if they inform on others. The idea is to use smaller fish to catch bigger ones, but often it works the opposite way. A kingpin knows many others to inform on, and with the conspiracy laws, everyone in the operation can be sentenced based on the totality of it. This is one reason we are seeing larger numbers of women incarcerated, caught up in the crimes of their husbands or boyfriends and sometimes informed on by them.

As President Clinton left office, he issued pardons in a few of the most egregious cases of drug war injustice. He also pardoned his brother Roger for his drug crimes. This left hundreds of thousands of similar offenders behind bars. Recent revelations show Attorney General designate John Ashcroft's nephew was given state probation rather than a federal sentence for marijuana possession, and Ronald Reagan's grandson got treatment instead of incarceration for a probation violation involving marijuana.

Ashcroft has been widely quoted saying drug treatment coddles our "lowest and least." This so-called Christian ought to check the bible, Matthew 25:40, where Jesus said, "Whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers, that you do unto me." Apparently the highest and most can pull strings with friends in high places, but the least must suffer for their addictions in a perversion of Christian morality. George W. Bush, in Saturday's inaugural address, sounded a more compassionate note when he said, "The proliferation of prisons, however necessary, is no substitute for hope and order in our souls....all of us are diminished when any are hopeless." Let's hope Bush's policies, unlike his selection for Attorney General, are reflective of his words.

Ashcroft's dilemma with his nephew is a classic example of life imitating art. In the movie Traffic, the daughter of the drug czar designate, played by Michael Douglas, has a heroin problem (arguably exacerbated by her father's get-tough reaction to it). The movie I like better on the subject, however, is Chocolat, where Juliet Binoche brings a bit of indulgence into a tired old town. In it, the priest concludes that morality should not be gauged by whom we exclude, but by who and what we learn to tolerate. Amen.