MAKE AN EXAMPLE OF NOELLE BUSH, THEN FOLLOW IT

NOELLE Bush, 25-year-old daughter of the governor of Florida and niece of
the president of the United States, was already in a drug rehab program
when she was found with a one-gram rock of crack cocaine in her shoe.

The judge who sent her to rehab in the first place found her in contempt of
court for the latest offense.

Contempt of court? At a time when America's prisons are bursting with drug
offenders who are less well-connected? When crack abusers in particular are
languishing under mandatory sentences? I say we ought to make an example of
this young woman.

No, I don't mean she should be hauled off in irons to do hard time in some
hellhole of a prison. (The judge did send her to jail for 10 days.) I think
she should be -- well, sent back to rehab.

My problem with Noelle Bush, I am saying, is not that she should be treated
the way so many other drug-abusers are treated, but that these luckless
others should be treated after her example.

Most Americans, I believe, would agree -- up to a point. We think some
combination of probation and rehabilitation makes sense for first-time drug
offenders whose only harm is to themselves -- no robberies, no driving
under the influence, no stealing.

But what if these first-timers violate their rehabilitation (as Bush did,
when she was diverted to a special drug court after her arrest last January
on charges of using a false prescription to try to buy the anti-anxiety
drug Xanax)? She was sent to jail for three days in July when she was found
with an unauthorized prescription drug. And now the crack charge.

Isn't it time the Florida courts showed her they're serious?

The question presupposes that drug offenders who violate the rules of their
treatment aren't serious -- that they agree to treatment merely because
it's the only way to avoid going to prison. But suppose the violations are
tokens not so much of contempt as of the power of the addiction? Think
Darryl Strawberry. Think Robert Downey Jr. Think all those people who blow
one break after another, who lose jobs, status, family, even their lives
because they won't -- or can't -- leave drugs alone.

How many times should we avoid throwing such people in jail for their
violations of the law?

"As long as it takes to get them well."

That's Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance,
when I put the question to him.

"No way she belongs in a jail cell, as long as she hasn't committed an
offense against another person," he said. "Would you jail a cancer patient
for violating his treatment protocol? A diabetic for not taking her
insulin? Would you jail an overweight person who is on a diet for eating
bread, knowing that the bread was bad for him?"

But having cancer or diabetes is not against the law, and bread -- though
arguably bad for overweight people -- isn't an illegal substance. Which, in
a way, is Nadelmann's point. We invoke the public health as the reasons we
make certain substances illegal, but then we allow our policy to be driven
by the illegality rather than by health considerations. If the illegality
is the main consideration, then maybe it makes sense that Strawberry is
behind bars. And if health is?

"If one form of treatment doesn't work, then try another form," says
Nadelmann. "And if that one doesn't work, then try another one. As with
many medical or psychological problems, one treatment doesn't work for
everybody. But you don't punish a patient because the treatment fails."

On this score, Nadelmann makes sense. So does Raag Singhal, a criminal
defense lawyer in Fort Lauderdale, who agrees that while Noelle Bush may
have been treated better than the inner-city youngster we normally think
about when we hear the word "crack," she's probably having a rougher time
of it than the children of other wealthy, but less visible, parents. As he
sees it, the young woman has a problem, and what makes sense is not to
punish her but to find the right treatment for her sickness.

I wish the young woman's father and uncle could see it that way -- and not
just for cases involving their own families.