Almost 41 years ago, Mick Jagger was arrested, tried and sentenced to imprisonment for the illegal possession of four amphetamines without a prescription. While he was on bail awaiting his appeal, this newspaper took up his cause in a leading article entitled, in a line taken from Alexander Pope, “Who breaks a butterfly on a wheel?”

It was not the custom of The Times then, or now, to devote a substantial section of its space here to the saga of pop singers, no matter how famous. However, William Rees Mogg, as the Editor, decided that the matter had been so discussed among the public and that the circumstances involved were sufficiently unusual that it would be appropriate for him to comment on the merits of the sentence. To the surprise of many, The Times came to the opinion that the Rolling Stone had been treated harshly and unfairly. His offence was of a technical nature rather than a more direct breach of the law of the land. The substances concerned were unlikely to do him harm in the quantities in which they existed. He had, in effect, been made an example of when other more anonymous individuals would have been treated leniently. He thus should be (and was) released.

Four decades on, the case of Amy Winehouse is very different. She might not be the superstar that Jagger was in the 1960s but she is a figure of considerable prominence and was the bestselling British recording artist last year.

Yesterday, her picture was cast across newspapers as she apparently consumed a gruesome cocktail of crack, Ecstasy and Valium. Even if the authenticity of these photographs is open to (faint) discussion, the descent into drug dependency that they illustrate is surely not for challenge. It is but another example of the extraordinary open self-destruction of this human being. Winehouse has, through her own often anguished lyrics, confirmed her predicament. Her best-known song is about her own refusal to adddress the problem of addiction: “They tried to make me go to rehab but I said no, no, no”. The wit of Rehab may be postmodern. Her derelict behaviour will end with an early post-mortem.

The plight of Winehouse is as iconic in its fashion as the Jagger affair was in 1967. At that time, drugs were predominantly associated with exclusive circles, not dark estates. Narcotics were linked with enhanced creativity, not abject addiction. As that leading article asserted, an opportunity had been seized to seek to cut Jagger, who seemed to embody decadence, and through him a counter-culture, down to a diminished size.

Winehouse's high-wire act with her life is of another order completely. Her addiction has become a surreal form of spectacle akin to reality television, which attracts attention and repulsion in similar measures. It is a curse that is duplicated in hundreds of thousands of other examples throughout this country in, if anything, even more squalid and sordid conditions. Many are to blame, including herself, her “friends” and certainly the media whose appetite for celebrity can sometimes blind them to their social responsibilities. Yet there are limits to what any of these outsiders can do other than ask Winehouse to stop dancing on the window ledge of life.

The case made for Jagger was that the State's overreaction was in danger of destroying an artist. For Winehouse, the opposite is true. The State's actions could save a great talent. She desperately needs to be brought into rehabilitation and, this time, to stay put there for weeks if not months. The means to that end have to be found.

Pope's epistle has much to say that is apt for human failings. Apart from raising the fate of the butterfly, he ponders “if there be force in virtue or in song”. There is force in virtue and, on occasion, virtue in force. In this instance, it is the one way of saving Winehouse and her song.