JUDGE SHOWS ADDICTS THE FUTURE

Sometimes, a picture tells a story better than words ever can. Credit
Circuit Judge Ric Howard with putting that truism to work regularly in his
courtroom.

As the judge presiding over the felony criminal docket, Howard has had a
front-row seat to the devastation that the growing epidemic of
methamphetamine use has been wreaking on Citrus County residents. He has
seen how this easily acquired and highly addictive drug has ruined users
and their loved ones.

Telling addicts the dangers of their chosen vice is usually futile. They
know, on whatever functioning level they have left, that meth is killing
them. They just cannot, or will not, decide to make the necessary changes
to save themselves.

Howard, however, has taken his self-help strategy to a higher level. He
employs horrific props in a garish game of show and tell.

Holding up large photographs - typically jail mug shots - of meth users
taken at the early and then the later stages of their addiction, Howard
tries to shock the defendants by showing them a glimpse of their future if
they continue on this destructive path.

The images are gruesome, made all the more so because they are real.

The early photos show relatively healthy individuals facing the jailhouse
camera. The people in the second pictures, sometimes taken just a month or
so later, are barely recognizable as living beings.

Howard has nicknames for the photos, such as the Time Machine and Face of
Living Death. He uses these not to mock the people in the photos but to
shock the people in his courtroom.

From the high-grade crystal form that enters the United States illegally
to the impure stuff that is being cooked up in local labs using household
chemicals - this generation's deadly version of bathtub gin -
methamphetamine use is spreading like wildfire across the country.

Rural and semirural communities, such as Citrus, seem particularly
susceptible to the lure of this drug, which has been dubbed "hillbilly
crack" because of its highly addictive nature.

Citrus County law enforcement is well aware of the presence of meth in the
community, and the arrest reports demonstrate their efforts at trying to
stem this rising tide. And when they do make an arrest, the defendant
sooner or later will face Howard.

Similar to the "Scared Straight" program and others like it that have
proved to be successful over the years by taking juvenile delinquents to
prison and showing them the direction they are headed, Howard's photo
displays aim to provide a wake-up call to the troubled people standing
before him.

Has it worked? Has anyone turned his or her life around after viewing these
horrible images? No one can say with any certainty because the defendants
usually are on their way to incarceration where, presumably, their meth
cravings will go unsatisfied.

Howard is under no obligation to go this extra mile to try to save these
lives, of course. He could easily just hand down their sentences and move
on to the next case.

But as difficult as it may be to believe after seeing some of the photos,
these souls still are human beings. Howard is to be commended for
remembering that.