Tatum O'Neal's Drug Bust Sentence: Appropriate or Not?
Tatum O'Neal, the Oscar-winning actress, took a plea deal on July 2 stemming from her June 1 arrest while supposedly trying to score some crack cocaine in New York City's Lower East Side. She was initially charged with possession of a controlled substance and faced a year in prison if convicted. The court allowed her to plead out to a disorderly conduct charge and ordered her to attend two half-day drug treatment sessions. If she follows the courts orders they will dismiss the cocaine possession charges.
O'Neal has been open about her history of heroine addiction as outlined in her memoir, A Paper Life. When she was arrested by undercover officers they searched her and found two bags of cocaine along with an unused crack pipe. She had initially told police that she was doing research for an acting role. Then she changed her story and told them that the death of her 16-year-old dog nearly triggered her into relapse.
Some say O'Neal was treated with a slap on the wrist. Others say she did not deserve to do any jail time because of her addiction. This begs a critical question that we as a society need to address. Should we treat drug addiction as a criminal matter or a medical problem? For most people, treatment is a much more effective approach than imprisonment for successfully breaking their addictions, yet our prisons are full of individuals whose only crime is their drug addiction.
According to Justice Department statistics, the U.S. holds a firm lead in maintaining the most prisoners of any country in the world -- now at 2.5 million and rising. In 2006, Justice recorded the largest increase since 2000 in the number of people in prisons and jails. Criminal justice experts attribute the exploding U.S. prison population to harsh sentencing laws and record numbers of drug law violators entering the system, many of whom have substance abuse problems.
Nonviolent drug offenders like Tatum O'Neal should be given an opportunity to receive treatment, not jail time, for their drug use. This would be a more effective (not to mention much more affordable) solution for both the individual and the community. Prosecutors in many states such as New York, where they have leeway to recommend a defendant to treatment instead of incarceration, more than likely will not do it. This is because it would not be considered a "win" for them. In effect, the system does not reward prosecutors for doing the compassionate thing.
O'Neal can be considered a role model to millions of young people all over the world. One can only hope that her experiences with addiction and the realities of the drug war will encourage her to join the movement to reform U.S. drug policy. If she decides to take up the cause of treatment, she could help change laws across the country. After all, if treatment instead of jail is good enough for her as she struggles with her addiction, surely it is good enough for the thousands of others just like her who struggle with their substance abuse problems every day.
Like depression, addiction affects tens of millions of Americans. How best to treat it is a serious a question we need to explore. Rich or poor, young or old, addiction has no boundaries - but the drug war does. Our 30-plus-year war on drugs has actually stifled the open debate society should be having about the nature of addiction and how best to deal with it. It is time to treat addiction for what it is, a medical problem, not a criminal one.
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I work in a minimal security prison. The offenders have worked to get enough "good time" to get to this facility to prepare to go into the free world again.
The majority of my students are drug offenders AND the majority of the younger offenders assure me that they can make more money selling drugs in an hour than they can in a month, working at McDonalds......To make a long story short, something ain't working here.
After you've been in prison,you're a felon. Felons can't get good jobs.
I have one young offender who is going to go to barber school......why? He is lucky enough to be from a family that owns a series of barbershops and salons.
It's back to selling drugs for the majority of my young offenders.
Poor Girl. Her drug habit and people like her has spawned a trail of blood from places like Columbia all the way to Harlem. People are being gunned down by FARC terrorists who control the drug crops in Columbia, then the killing starts again in Mexico where tens of thousands of people have died violent deaths to bring this poor girl her dope.
Then poor little Tatum goes to the lower east side to score her drugs, her addiction creating more violence and crime as violent street gangs seek to control the lucrative trade supplying addicts and users like Tatum.
Drugs use should not be crime, and the government should take the profit out of the drug trade by supplying addicts with the drugs they need at rock bottom prices until the users can get treatment for drug addiction. However, until that day we should not close our eyes to the damage people like Tatum do to our communities, and the world.
"Nonviolent drug offenders"? Why would there be any such thing as violent drug offenders if we all of a sudden got bright and just legalized up everything?
Let's see! Jacking people up to get money to pay for a high? Nope, or at least no more so than people doing that to pay for a cocktail or a cig.
Turf Wars? Never heard of a liquor store onwer shooting his competitor.
Bad debts? Snitches? Geez there just wouldn't be any drug violence left, would there? Wow, the prohibition is the actual source of the violence and not either the drugs or the drug users. Or, put another way, this is just a case of the misguided use of government power causing a problem that would not otherwise exist.
Finally, legalizing drugs would strike a major blow against all gangs. Money is the glue that keeps gang bangers loyal, and legalization would remove the single largest source of gang income.
sounds like the same Plea Deal struck on behalf of CIndyLou
ahh, the rich!
Don't forget Rush!
Her plea bargain was fine. The problem comes from the reality that you or I would not have gotten the same soft attention. Celebrities get special treatment, and it's disgusting.
People don't do crack for fun. That's the final step in an addiction that is killing a person. By the time someone has sunk to crack, they are beyond the ability to simply stop. They need treatment. That is true of Tatum O'Neil AND the minimum wage worker caught doing the same thing. But the minimum wage worker gets a court-appointed lawyer who does not have time to put on a proper defense, and they end up with the maximum sentence, which just leads to more addiction and violence.
The War on Drugs has failed. It's been a failure for a decade and everyone knows it. But the self-appointed do-gooders who think they know better still push it and push it. Somehow they expect, by doing the same thing over and over, to get different results.
How about simply leaving nonviolent drug users alone. Rehab & treatment - ESPECIALLY 12-step treatment - have been shown by stacks of research to only make the problems worse. They take an acute behavioral issue and turn it into a "lifelong, chronic condition" with no evidence to back any diagnosis.
Drug use is a free will behavior, and you modify behaviors with various techniques. You do not "treat" them as you do REAL diseases. Anyone who really wants to know how modern psychology came about should look into the history of the DSM-II (We are now on DSM-IV.) Look at how slim the number of mental diseases were before politics and money got involved.
For the majority of users, it's drug indulgence not drug addiction. Why deal with it any differently than alcohol, or tobacco? Eradication and criminalization has wasted billions, while spawning vast criminal empires with a growing appetite for violence.
If you want to examine our offshore "success" in the war on drugs, look no further than Mexico, Afghanistan and Columbia. Under American pressure to eradicate drug production / crops, these nations have become mired in an endless cycle of class war, bloodshed and corruption. How about the 1970's NYPD Narcotics Division? rampant corruption. Followed by the "Miami River Cops" in the '80's. More than 100 Miami police officers were arrested, suspended or convicted.
I agree wholeheartedly on all your points except one: I doubt that Tatum is a role-model to anyone but her own children, and even that may be a stretch. They're probably old enough to know better by now.
Anyone who actually pays attention and/or cares about this issue knows that the "War On Drugs" is a stupid, miserable failure. High time (pun intended) we progress to treating drug addiction as a medical problem. Fascism is all its virulent forms will hopefully one day be expunged and forever banished from our culture. Then we can say we've made progress!
Earthlings Unite!
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