NOELLE BUSH SHOWS DRUG SYSTEM'S FLAWS

President's niece, like other drug offenders, needs more treatment

Noelle Bush, 25-year-old daughter of the governor of Florida and niece of
the president, already was 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
the 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 Ms. Bush isn't that she should be treated the way so many
other drug abusers are treated but that those luckless others should be
treated as she has been.

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 those first-timers violate their rehabilitation (as Ms. Bush did
when she was diverted to a special drug court after her arrest in 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 are 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 is
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 is 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 isn't against the law, and bread - though
arguably bad for overweight people - isn't an illegal substance.

Which, in a way, is Mr. Nadelmann's point. We invoke public health as the
reason 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, it may make sense that Mr. Strawberry
is behind bars. But if health is?

"If one form of treatment doesn't work, try another form," Mr. Nadelmann
said. "And if that one doesn't work, 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 that score, Mr. 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 probably is 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 isn't 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.

William Raspberry writes for The Washington Post.