COMMON PROBLEM, COMMON HELP

Families with a member adrift in a cloud of drug addiction will have
difficulty seeing "a silver lining" amid the all-encompassing misery.

Yet in reference to Noelle Bush's drug offenses, lawyer Catherine O'Neil of
the New York-based Legal Action Center assures us such a lining exists.
Because of the prominence of the governor's daughter, all legal rulings
related to her case -- she was charged with trying to fraudulently buy a
prescription drug and sent to drug court -- could establish a needed legal
standard for respecting patients' confidentiality during drug and alcohol
treatment.

As every parent knows, drugs are an equal-opportunity enslaver, without
respect for economic condition, social status or racial identity. Because
Ms. Bush, 25, is the daughter of Florida's governor and niece of the
president, however, every aspect of how the legal system handles her case
is being scrutinized and compared with the treatment of others who also are
mired in drug addiction but lack social prominence.

Ms. Bush's plight became public internationally when she was arrested Jan.
29, in Tallahassee for trying to buy Xanax, an anti-anxiety drug, with a
forged prescription. She asked for and received transfer to the Center for
Drug-Free Living, a small rehabilitation facility in Orlando, where the
clients include about 30 other women, many of them poor single mothers.

During treatment, Ms. Bush must make periodic appearances before Circuit
Judge Reginald Whitehead, who runs the drug court for Orange and Osceola
counties. He will decide whether she will remain in the rehabilitation
program, be released as having successfully completed treatment, or be
declared in violation of the drug court agreement and sent back to criminal
court in Leon County to face the original felony charges.

In July, after the center staff reported to the judge that Ms. Bush had
been caught with prescription drugs in her possession, she was sentenced to
three days in jail and returned to rehab. On Sept. 9, another rehab center
client, complaining that the "princess" gets caught repeatedly but never is
punished, called police to report that Noelle Bush had a 0.2-gram of rock
cocaine in her shoe. When officers arrived, however, a center staff member,
after initially offering to confirm the offense, tore up the affidavit on
the advice of her superiors.

Prosecutors went to court, seeking to force four workers at the center to
cooperate with the investigation. On Monday, Orange County Circuit Judge
Belvin Perry Jr. ruled that staff members do not have to testify, because
federal privacy laws protect patients who are residents in a drug treatment
center and also are under the supervision of a drug-court judge.

This ruling has been declared too lenient by many Floridians with drug-
addicted relatives who were summarily sentenced to jail for criminal drug
offenses without having been accorded the option of drug treatment over
incarceration. These critics argue that Ms. Bush's treatment affirms a
double standard of justice that winks when a person of status is addicted.

Admittedly, that accusation has some merit, but in this instance, Judge
Perry has not winked at status or power politics on either side. He made a
just decision that acknowledges, as the law should, the inescapable reality
that drug addiction is a cyclical illness. Of addicts, the judge wrote, "If
they were able to permanently abstain from using illicit substances without
suffering any relapses, then they would not be drug addicts." He correctly
noted that the Legislature's "explicit intent" in creating the drug court
is that eligible drug offenders be diverted from the criminal justice
system into treatment- based drug-court programs. (Note: Eligibility for
rehabilitation seems to be the most critical issue.)

Hence, if there is any double standard at work in this situation, the fault
lies not in Judge Perry's ruling about patient privacy but in the
inequitable way in which one citizen is criminally prosecuted for drug
offenses while another is offered a chance for rehabilitation through a
drug court.

No significant silver lining to our drug problems exists until the justice
system provides all addicts an equal opportunity to salvage their lives.