Published on Tuesday, September 17, 2002 by Arianna
Huffington


A Crack House Divided
by Arianna Huffington

I feel nothing but sympathy and concern for Noelle
Bush. Her latest stumble on the rocky road to recovery
– being caught with crack cocaine at a drug rehab
center – shows that she is in desperate need of help.


As a parent, I can also easily empathize with the
anguish Noelle's father, Florida Governor Jeb Bush,
must be experiencing. And I'm in total agreement with
his insistence that his daughter's substance abuse
problem is "a private issue."

But when I think about the heartless stance the
Governor has taken toward the drug problems of those
less-fortunate and well-connected than his daughter,
my empathy turns to outrage.

While Noelle has been given every break in the book –
and then some – her father has made it harder for
others in her position to get the help they need by
cutting the budgets of drug treatment and drug court
programs in his state. He has also actively opposed a
proposed ballot initiative that would send an
estimated 10,000 non-violent drug offenders into
treatment instead of jail. I guess what's good for the
goose, gets the gander locked away.

Of course, Jeb's wildly inconsistent attitude on the
issue – treatment and privacy for his daughter,
incarceration and public humiliation for everyone else
– is part and parcel of the galling hypocrisy that
infects America's insane drug war on every level.

The latest example of this madness is last week's
early morning DEA raid on a medical marijuana club in
Santa Cruz, Calif., that caters to terminally ill
patients. Although the hospice-style operation has
been lauded by local law enforcement officials for its
caring and ethical approach, federal agents stormed
the place with guns drawn and chainsaws whirring –
leveling its pot garden, handcuffing ailing patients
(including a paraplegic), and carting off its founder
and director, Valerie Corral, a woman who has been
called the Florence Nightingale of the medical
marijuana movement.

So much for the Bush administration's compassionate
conservatism. And its conservative consistency. Back
when he was running for president, candidate Bush
declared that medical marijuana is a states' rights
issue. "I believe," he said, "each state can choose
that decision as they so choose." Although the mangled
syntax makes it a little hard to tell exactly what the
President was getting at, is it consistent with
allowing John Ashcroft to order a holy-roller war
against cannabis clubs in California, even though it
is one of twelve states that have decriminalized the
use of pot for medical purposes?

Surely there has got to be a better use of our limited
law enforcement resources than busting grievously ill
cancer and AIDS patients searching for relief from
their suffering. How about unearthing a terrorist cell
or two?

And the White House continues to bombard us with those
offensive – and expensive – TV spots implying that
youthful drug users like Noelle Bush are the moral
equivalent of Mohammed Atta. Maybe her Uncle George
can get her an audition for the next round of
taxpayer-funded ads. Show her pulling some crack out
of her shoe while saying, "I helped blow up
buildings."

Or does that kind of overheated and stigmatizing
rhetoric only apply to those other, non-Bush-family
youthful drug users? After all, a glaring double
standard has been a hallmark of our nation's drug
policy for decades. It's why African Americans make up
only 13 percent of the country's drug users but 55
percent of those convicted of drug possession and 74
percent of those sent to jail on possession charges.
And why the youthful indiscretions of the rich are
routinely treated with a slap on the wrist and a
ticket to rehab while poor kids are shipped off to
prison.

If America's drug laws were applied consistently, Jeb
Bush and his family would be evicted from their
publicly-funded digs, just as people living in public
housing can be thrown out of their homes if any
household member or guest is found using drugs – even
if the drug use happened someplace other than in the
housing project. And Noelle could find herself joining
the tens of thousands of young people unable to get a
college education because of a provision in the Higher
Education Act that denies financial aid to students
convicted of possessing illegal drugs.

But the rich and powerful are judged by a very
different set of rules. That