NOELLE BUSH NEEDS HELP, AS ALL ADDICTS DO

I knew Noelle Bush had a drug problem before she was arrested.

The state editor told me.

He knew because most of the reporters in Tallahassee who cover the governor
knew about it.

We are not the mudslingers we are portrayed to be. This was Jeb's family
affair and had no bearing on his job, so it was off-limits.

But when Noelle was arrested, the family matter became a criminal matter
and therefore a story.

From a political perspective, it will be embarrassing and distracting for
Bush. I hope it will be one more thing -- enlightening.

In the booking picture of Noelle Bush, she looks like she could have been
arrested on a street corner, trying to earn enough for her next fix. She
has the hollow-eyed, defeated look of an addict.

But when an addict is the daughter of a doctor, lawyer or governor, she is
upgraded to "victim of substance abuse."

The only real difference between substance abusers and addicts is the drug
they are addicted to and their financial resources.

Poor crack users are addicts. Wealthy prescription-drug users are substance
abusers.

We think of one as a criminal -- and the other as a family problem.

I am not saying Noelle Bush is a criminal, far from it. Jail will do her no
good. When it comes to addiction, all jail does is delay the next fix.

What I am saying is: Let's put all addicts in the same boat and treat them
the same way.

Addiction is a medical problem, resulting from a mix of social and personal
issues, possibly aggravated by genetic predisposition.

And yet we continue to attack the problem with cops and courts, which is
why we haven't made any headway since the 1960s in curbing addiction. Our
generation has been doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past generation.
We toss aside reality for law-and-order rhetoric.

For the past 10 years, more people have been sent to jail for drug offenses
than any other charge. Last year, almost 29 percent of Florida prisoners
had been convicted of drug offenses. Karen Johnson, a woman whose main
crime was addiction to painkillers, died of withdrawal in the Orange County
Jail last year.

I am not familiar with Noelle Bush's case except that she has been in
drug-treatment centers in the past and the problem has been ongoing for
years. But I wonder if she could have wound up like Karen Johnson if her
parents didn't have the resources to intervene.

The Bushes did what any of us would do in the circumstances. They tried to
help their loved one and to keep her out of the criminal- justice system.
If not for that support, she may well have run afoul of the law years ago.

Noelle will not go to jail, nor should she unless she endangers somebody.
But what is right for her also is right for some other addicts who wind up
in jail because they have no money or family support.

They need help, not punishment. Yet the Department of Corrections, under
Jeb Bush, has approved a $13 million budget cut that will slash
drug-treatment programs for inmates and scale back programs to help addicts
outside the prisons.

It's not because the programs don't work. Of those prisoners who completed
the treatment program, 70 percent stayed out of jail.

Jeb Bush should look at Noelle and consider what her fate would be if she
were being sent off to a jail cell with nobody there to help her.

And if that thought grabs at a father's heart, then he should reconsider
what his administration is doing.