WOMAN INELIGIBLE FOR DRUG COURT: 'I FEEL I DESERVE A CHANCE'

Every morning that Gail Tuman wakes with a backache is a good
morning.

Every ache and pain, every sentimental reaction to a sappy commercial,
every good emotion and every bad one is proof the Berkeley Township
resident is alive and finally feeling life again.

Six months ago, Tuman says, she rose from the walking death that is
heroin addiction. Now she is focusing on recovery and reality. She no
longer hides in her bedroom, snorting the drug and trying to make
arrangements to buy the five bags she says she needed every day.

"Because heroin is the ultimate painkiller, I never felt anything,"
she said. ""With heroin, you are a walking robot. You don't have any
feelings. You just exist. I can't tell you the last time I felt a
backache. Now I enjoy a backache. At least I can feel something."

Tuman is more than a recovering addict, however. The 46-year-old
mother of two is also, according to the Ocean County Prosecutor's
Office, a serious drug dealer who deserves serious punishment. And,
because she is considered a major dealer, Tuman is not eligible for
the county's fledgling Drug Court program, which aims at
rehabilitating long-term addicts instead of punishing them with prison
terms.

Tuman's case raises questions about whether an addict who illegally
sells drugs for profit is less likely to be rehabilitated than one who
commits less serious crimes to keep their own habit satisfied. In the
view of those who run the Drug Courts, there is a clear
distinction.

It is not the fact she sold drugs, authorities said, it is the fact
that she sold so much: She says authorities accused her of selling a
brick 50 bags a day, which would have generated a $1,000-a-day income.

She scoffs at that, saying that if it were true, her ranch house would
not be in disrepair and the car authorities seized from her would not
have been a 16-year-old clunker.

Tuman thinks she should be allowed into Drug Court. "All I know is, I
feel I deserve a chance," she said.

"I have no doubt she was rejected (for Drug Court), and I have no
problem about that," said Supervising Assistant Ocean County
Prosecutor Robert A. Gasser. Tuman was one of 22 people he rejected
from the Drug Court program since it began April 1, Gasser said.

"I have a manual that we must follow that excludes dealers for profit,
dealers with a capital "D,' who sell out of their house over a period
of time," Gasser said. "They pose a threat to the community."

On Friday, Tuman will be sentenced for her third and fourth
convictions for distributing drugs from her house. The arrests came
during raids on her home barely a month apart: on Aug. 8 and Sept. 27
of last year.

"That's when I came home and said "This is it. I'm done,' " Tuman
said. ""I fought the law and the law won."

Tuman says she had been addicted to heroin since at least 1996. She
also said she beat her addiction six months ago.

Still, she knows, her reputation precedes her. "I'm very well known in
a bad way, but they also make me out much worse than I am," she said.
"There's a difference between someone dealing for money and someone
dealing to keep their habit going."

Tuman, who is scheduled to be sentenced by Superior Court Judge James
N. Citta in Toms River, faces a maximum nine-year prison term, after
pleading guilty April 1 to possession of heroin with the intention of
distributing it. Charges that she possessed cocaine and marijuana,
including a cocaine possession charge from February, are to be
dismissed as part of the plea.

She said pleaded guilty because she feared she would get a longer
prison sentence if convicted in court.

But Tuman wants to be admitted into Drug Court and doesn't understand
why she doesn't qualify. Even her Aug. 8, 2001, arrest in which
members of the Ocean County Narcotics Strike Force recovered 95 bags
of heroin in her Princeton Avenue home demonstrates only that her
addiction had gotten out of control, she said. She couldn't think
about anything logical, only the need to keep her own heroin supply
flowing.

"I live on a dead-end road," Tuman said. ""You have to be under the
influence of drugs to deal out of this house. When I came out of this
fog (of heroin addiction), I said to myself, "You have to be out of
your mind. You just don't do these things.' "

Prosecutors while not speaking directly about the Tuman case caution
that an addict's statements must be viewed skeptically because addicts
have learned over time how to lie and manipulate others very
effectively.

That's why First Assistant Ocean County Prosecutor Terrence P. Farley
says authorities need more than expressions of remorse from some drug
dealers.

"We hear that only when it is time to pay the piper," Farley said.
""With some people, there is no other alternative but to pay the
piper." Drug Court, Farley said "is not your escape for a life of drug
dealing, that's for sure. Nor was it ever intended to be."

Ocean County Prosecutor Thomas F. Kelaher agrees, saying heroin
addiction ruins the lives of the addicts, their families and often the
neighborhoods where the addicts live or go to purchase their drugs.
But beyond those issues, Tuman is excluded from Drug Court based on
regulations by the state court system that prohibit admission for
those who deal for profit, authorities said. Authorities do not bar
all drug dealers from admission, just those viewed to be repeat
offenders and major sources of illicit drugs.

"She could probably use the rehabilitation," Kelaher conceded. ""She
just falls out of it. There's a whole statutory thing and a procedural
checklist that must be followed."

Tuman admits she sold heroin, but she said she had steady clients four
working-class people and that she never sold to children. But most of
the heroin was for her own use, she maintains. She paid $10 for each
bag and resold them for $20 each. Trying to buy the drug is dangerous
in itself, and she just didn't like making frequent trips, she said.

"In order to do my drugs, I had to deal," Tuman said.

Lt. Jeffrey Bissey, commander of the Ocean County Narcotics Strike
Force, said a dealer of Tuman's magnitude would generally make two or
three trips each week to her source city, returning each time with at
least 150 bags of heroin.

Tuman said authorities relied on information from another addict to
conclude she was selling 400 to 500 bags of heroin each week.

"Just because we only found 95 bags of heroin doesn't mean that was
all she had," countered Bissey, who described Tuman as a "substantial
heroin dealer in this area." He also called the 95 bags "a significant
seizure" for the strike force.

"Taking someone like that off the street considering how much she was
dealing it will make it harder for people to get heroin in this area,"
Bissey said. "Are we going to stop every person who drives into
Philadelphia, Asbury Park or Irvington to buy a couple of bags for
personal use? No.

"But we can make it very hard for people to get it locally," Bissey
said. ""I do believe her arrest made a dent in the problem around
here.""I'm embarrassed'

Tuman says she has difficulty now recalling the addicted person she
was, the one who kept dealing, even when it appeared her acts could
only land her in prison for a third time.

"When you are sober, you can see that, that the cops will keep
coming," Tuman said. "When you're under the influence, you think
you're untouchable or you just don't care. In the middle of your
addiction, you are not even getting high. You are just as they say
staying straight" by doing enough heroin to avoid withdrawal.

Although now she admits she feels embarrassed by her arrests and
criminal acts and by having to face the judge, the last time she was
sent to prison, she could not react. She was numb. She was also high.
Heroin just disconnected her from reality.

"This time will be different," Tuman said. ""I'm embarrassed to see
the judge. But I've never been sober long enough to care."

The fact that Tuman became sober since her last arrest is one reason
why she no longer qualifies for Drug Court, according to Winnie
Comfort, a spokeswoman for the state Administrative Office of the
Courts, which plans to have Drug Courts operating in each New Jersey
county by 2003. Monmouth's Drug Court also got under way this year.

"One of the key components of Drug Court is to help people who are
addicted get sober and stay sober," Comfort said. "Drug Court does not
have the resources devoted to helping a criminal. . . . It is not the
need to deal, it is the need to use" that the program seeks to address.

Further, said Comfort, addiction treatment experts do not recommend
admission for those users who deal for profit. "People who are dealing
for profit and living from that money are much more difficult
treatment candidates," she said.

Over the last several years, and particularly after the arrests last
year, Tuman's family tried to convince her that the county strike
force was conducting surveillance on her, but even then she could not
curtail her heroin activities, she said.

"When you're under the influence, you just don't care," Tuman said.
""I thought I was living a normal life. My kids were doing OK in
school and my house was clean and there was food in the refrigerator.
There was nothing wrong with Gail except that Gail gave her life to
drugs. While you're in it, you don't think about it. Heroin strips you
of every feeling, every thought process. I've never fought for my life
before. But now, I'm fighting and I'm going to save my life, no matter
what."

Tuman says she first tried marijuana at 18. She moved on to other
substances, beginning with Quaaludes, or the drug methaqualone, a
synthetic sedative and hypnotic.

"When I put that Quaalude into my system and it took off, I actually
said, "Wow, I feel like a whole person,' " Tuman said. "All I know is,
all the bad feelings I had about myself, they would go away. I would
forget about them for a little while."

During the 28 years she abused drugs, she lost close contact with her
siblings, although her family members say she remained a devoted
mother to her two sons, now adults, even attending Scout meetings and
school functions.

"The boys are my best achievement," she said. ""I was determined that
my boys were not going to turn out like their mother."

Tuman regrets that it took her so long to get free of the drugs. She
says it took her far too long to admit that her addiction was a disease.

"I call it "the little man inside my head,' " she said. ""Even today,
the little man will pop up. But the little man isn't going to be
satisfied with just one bag. One bag wouldn't do it. I'd have to go
back to that whole wild life, and I'm not going back."

Her sister, Georgia Fisher, said Tuman the addict was just not someone
she wanted to be around.

"One day you would come here and she would be happy-go-lucky," said
Fisher, also of Berkeley. "The next day, she wouldn't want to know
you. You never knew what was going to hit you when you walked through
the door."

Family members knew Tuman was dealing. They often talked about whether
it was safe to visit her, weighing it against the odds they could be
caught up in yet another drug raid.

"I didn't think of her as a bad person," Fisher said. ""It would be
like you or me having a job. Drugs were her job."Mixed messages

Rejection from the Drug Court program sends a message to Tuman that
she is not worth saving, a message she says complicates her recovery
and contradicts the message she takes from the Narcotics Anonymous and
Alcoholics Anonymous meetings she frequently attends.

"No one is hopeless," Tuman said. ""Everyone can succeed if they want
it. I'm not a violent person. I deal. That's the bad part."

The good part, she said, is she is off heroin, she hopes for good. And
she likes the way she feels. "I don't have mood swings. I'm not
constantly looking over my shoulder. This is the brokest I've ever
been, but within myself, I am at peace. This is also the happiest I've
been. I'm sober today, and I thank God for that. I'm sorry it took so
long. I'm sorry I hurt so many people."

Withdrawal wasn't easy, and experts say it never is. She came off the
heroin while an inmate in Ocean County Jail after her arrest last
fall. "Coming off cocaine or speed, you might feel cruddy for a couple
of days, but with heroin, every nerve in your body is kicking. That's
why they call it kicking" the habit.

But when she was released on bail, she had made up her mind, sort of,
she admits.

"In the beginning what kept me sober was not having any money, but
today what keeps me sober is AA and NA," the initials for two 12-step
recovery programs. "I just wish I had a chance to better myself"
through Drug Court.

The county loses nothing in admitting her, she said, noting that if
she fails, "I'm going to prison. They'll get their punishment. I'll be
a three-time loser. . . . I've been facing prison time for a year, and
that is a kind of prison term in itself, waiting, waiting, waiting."

In fact, Senior Assistant Ocean County Prosecutor Ronald F. DeLigny
intends to seek an extended term of imprisonment for Tuman, based on
her prior record. But Tuman says prison will do her little good. She
previously served prison terms in 1992 and 1997.

"In prison, that's where I met the girl I did my first line of heroin
with," she said. "Not that I'm putting blame on anyone else. You have
to take responsibility."

Tuman's public defender, Richard H. Archer Jr., said drug treatment
will ultimately do more to win the war on drugs than lengthy prison
terms.

"Since 1971, rehabilitation has not been a part of the criminal
justice system," said Archer, referring to the year the state adopted
its current criminal code. "This Drug Court is great. What we're
hoping is, this is just a start in helping more people deal with
substance abuse."

Tuman is particularly interested in Drug Court's job-training
component. Aside from drug dealing and 11 1/2 years experience as a
florist, Tuman has no marketable skills. Tuman also never served time
in long-term rehabilitation Drug Court requires at least six months in
such a facility. Her only stab at rehab was a 28-day program shortened
to 21 days by her insurance company in 1991.

"This is the longest I've ever been clean," said Tuman, who celebrates
six months of sobriety today. "My acquaintances, I don't even have
them anymore. When you are clean and sober, you find out you don't
have anything in common with these people. Once you stop dealing,
forget it. You don't have any friends in the drug world. Once I didn't
have the drugs, my phone stopped ringing."