Letters to the Editor
The Miami Herald
To the Editor:
Governor Jeb Bush's request that the family's privacy be respected during Noelle
Bush's alleged difficulties with drugs is understandable and deserving of our
sympathy.
Nevertheless, Noelle Bush's arrest for allegedly forging a Xanax prescription comes two days after The Herald's comprehensive story about Governor Bush's budget, "Florida Slashing Care for Drug Addicts" (27 January).
Clearly Ms. Bush will receive the finest professional care for her health and legal difficulties that money can buy and prestige can arrange. As a first-time alleged offender, she deserves them.
But the family's request for privacy should not be respected so scrupulously that it permits a bizarre, Emperor's-New-Clothes disconnect between Ms. Bush's difficulties and the substance-abuse difficulties of tens of thousands of Floridians who have neither money nor prestige and are at the mercy of the whims of state government. Many of these first-time offenders will spend time in jail and prison. And now, far fewer of them will have the slightest hope, behind bars or in the community, of receiving competent treatment for their substance-abuse difficulties.
Jeb Bush is a concerned father, and also the Governor of Florida. After submitting his substance-abuse treatment budget slashes, he cannot fairly expect the media to treat his daughter's difficulties as if they happened on another planet in a different millennium. That was now. This is now.
Can we not realistically hope that, challenged by this family tragedy, Governor Bush will realize he has clear obligations to every Florida family with a similar tragedy?
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