Pubdate: Tue, 17 Sep 2002
Source: Palm Beach Post, The (FL)
Copyright: 2002 The Palm Beach Post
Contact:  http://www.gopbi.com/partners/pbpost/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/333
Author: Jac Wilder VerSteeg

GOV. BUSH AND DRUG REHAB CLINICS

After Noelle Bush was accused last week of having crack cocaine, Gov. Bush 
said, "This is a private issue as it relates to my daughter, myself and my 
wife." His political life and his private life, the governor insists, do 
not intersect.

Gov. Bush himself has brought up his daughter at least twice in public; 
once this spring at a Tallahassee drug summit, and once last month while he 
campaigned at a Pentecostal church. Both times, Gov. Bush asked supporters 
to pray for Noelle, who is 25, and both times Gov. Bush cried.

It would be foolish for anyone who has a daughter or son not safely into 
those 30-something years to start thinking that he or she is a superior 
parent to Jeb and Columba Bush. Addictions are complex and powerful. Good 
parents can have troubled kids. The intersection between the governor's 
public and private lives is not that his daughter's plight proves anything 
about him as a parent. Rather, Noelle Bush and her parents, in their 
private capacity, have been let down by a system that Gov. Bush, in his 
official capacity, also has let down.

Specifically, Gov. Bush has not kept his 4-year-old pledge to fix the 
Florida Department of Children and Families, which oversees a range of 
services and clinics -- including the one in Orange County that is 
providing treatment to Noelle Bush. DCF has been more concerned with 
covering its own butt than with looking after the children and families 
supposedly in the state's care. Gov. Bush, in his political life, has been 
engaged in a similar duck-and-cover.

When top DCF officials learned in May that 5-year-old Rilya Wilson had been 
missing for a year without anybody noticing, they waited six days before 
notifying police. They wanted to handle it in-house. Gov. Bush, meanwhile, 
raised his own smokescreens, appointing a panel of cronies to investigate. 
It was no surprise when they backed DCF leadership -- a conclusion exposed 
as foolish when the governor appointed Bush family loyalist Jerry Regier to 
replace Kathleen Kearney as the agency's secretary.

The latest CYA attempt by a state-supported institution involves Noelle 
Bush. She is being treated for substance abuse at the Center for Drug- Free 
Living in Orlando. A judge sent her there as an alternative to prosecution 
after she was arrested in Tallahassee in January and charged with 
fraudulently obtaining the prescription drug Xanax. The treatment facility 
is not part of DCF, but it is licensed by DCF and apparently shares that 
agency's tendency toward self-protection.

Last week, a center resident tipped police that the staff had found crack 
cocaine in Ms. Bush's shoe. Police investigated, and one employee was 
providing a written statement. But her supervisor told the worker to stop 
cooperating, and the employee tore up her statement.

Police then said they couldn't charge Ms. Bush because center employees 
wouldn't cooperate. The police officer said a center official told them it 
was "standard operating procedure to handle these types of situations 
in-house." Possessing any amount of cocaine is a felony in Florida. There 
is no "in-house" exemption. The Orange-Osceola State Attorney's Office has 
subpoenaed four of the workers.

The Miami Herald later reported that "the police report raised questions 
whether officials at the Center for Drug-Free Living may have given Noelle 
Bush special treatment." But this isn't a case of Noelle Bush getting 
special treatment. It's a case of the agency, which provides services in 
part with public dollars, trying to give itself special treatment. Ms. Bush 
is at the center precisely because she needs special treatment. It's not 
unusual for an addict to have lapses before treatment succeeds. The big 
question isn't whether Ms. Bush had crack, even though it could result in 
another felony charge. The question is how she got it and whether the 
Center for Drug-Free Living or its employees is at fault.

On Friday, a judge delayed reviewing Noelle Bush's case because center 
employees won't cooperate. She could be sent to jail, as she was briefly in 
July when caught with unauthorized prescription drugs. She also could be 
bounced from the program and face the original charge in Tallahassee and 
the potential other charge in Orlando.

Dropping her from the program would not help. As a father, and as a 
governor, however, Mr. Bush should be holding DCF and the clinics with 
which the agency is allied accountable. Secrecy helps bureaucrats and 
politicians, not drug treatment clients.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Alex