ENTIRE COMMUNITY AFFECTED BY DRUGS

One of the first impressions that a visitor has in Judge Wayne Trockman's
Drug Court is that most of the addicts there look as if they could be your
neighbors. And in fact, they may well be.

Some have not used crack or cocaine or any of those illegal drugs that
we've waged war against. They're addicted instead to Lortab, Zoloft, Xanax
- - a whole dictionary of "legal" drugs that they get not from pushers on the
street but from doctors.

Some are alcoholics. What they're doing now is the hardest thing they've
ever done in their lives. Not all of them are going to succeed, but about
75 percent of them have beat the odds so far. And for them - for the
addicts and their families, for their neighbors and for this entire
community - the payoff can be enormous.

Just ask the husband and young son of a 34-year-old woman who recently
became the first person to successfully complete the rigorous requirements
of Trockman's day-reporting treatment program. It was an emotional scene,
but it wasn't the court's first success.

Visit the courtroom on any Tuesday afternoon in Room 1 of Vanderburgh
Superior Court and hear the stories.

A mother whose three children were taken from her seven years ago because
of her drug addiction stands before Trockman and cries softly, struggling
to put into words the new life she's building. She has been sober for
almost a year. She has a job. And now she has her children back.

That woman is one of six Drug Court participants so far who've regained
custody of their children by meeting all the rigorous requirements of the
treatment program. It's a remarkable record.

And it's happening with fathers, too. A 39-year-old man who was addicted to
cocaine is working now and has been drug-free for almost a year. "I'm able
to buy school clothes for my kids," he told Trockman.

The court's first drug-free baby is due to be born this month. Both the
mother and father were using drugs before enrolling in the program. How do
you measure that kind of impact? It's something not accomplished by just
throwing people in jail.

One man brought his sister and her husband to meet Trockman at a court
hearing. He explained that in the past, he was always too ashamed to go
around his family because of his alcohol and drug use. "I didn't want to be
seen that way," he said.

Today, he's sober and building new relationships. In the past year, he has
worn out two sets of tires on his bicycle, pedaling to work and to Drug
Court and Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.

The savings to taxpayers in some cases has been enormous. One man, age 33,
estimates that before enrolling in Drug Court, he was incarcerated for a
combined total of more than 13 years - in jail and prison and at the SAFE
House - for crimes commited to support his drug habit.

"I would do crimes four and five times a day," he said. One of his common
tricks was to pick up discarded receipts in shopping center parking lots,
go into the stores, get the items on the receipt and "return" them for cash
to buy more crack or cocaine.

A man who was addicted to Xanax, taking 20 at a time, twice a day, told how
he would go to hospital emergency rooms and doctors' offices throughout the
Tri-State and fake the symptom for which the drug is prescribed. He
committed a lot of theft to support that habit, he said.

Today he's drug-free and working. Unable to get a driver's license, he has
worn out two pair of shoes since enrolling in Drug Court.

It takes a lot of walking to get to work, report to court counselors every
day and report for daily Breathalyzers, twice-weekly urinalysis, daily AA
or Narcotics Anonymous meetings and weekly or biweekly court appearances to
talk with the judge.

Trockman established the Drug Court 16 months ago amid a sea of skepticism
by his fellow judges, the prosecutor's staff and some police officers.
Today, most of them are believers. They've seen what can happen. As for the
observation by one court visitor that most of the addicts look as if they
could be your neighbor, Drug Court Administrator Debbie Mowbray agreed.

"They not only look like it," she said. "Some of them are your neighbors."

Some are the people who cook your dinner at a restaurant, she added; or
maybe they do your dry-cleaning, or take care of your grandmother in a
nursing home, or drive the taxi that takes you to the airport.

Her point is this: "They're members of our community. This is a community
disease."