Tina
Nadeau
Chief
Justice
New
Hampshire Superior Court
When Tina Nadeau was first appointed to
the New Hampshire bench in 2004, she wasted no time launching a conversation
about the need for drug courts at the county level. Defendants, she observed, had
no access to treatment either while they were in prison or on probation.
Assigned then to the drug court in
Rockingham County, Nadeau, as she remembers it, “got people [from the county]
together, got two weeks of training in Oklahoma, got an implementation grant,
and we were up and running” with a drug court.
In the four years since she was named
chief justice of the Superior Court, the number of county-based drug courts has
increased from two to six.
Still, Nadeau is not resting on any
laurels. Citing the need for yet more treatment and other services for drug
abusers, she is hoping there will be a commitment at the state level to support
drug courts. In a rural state like New Hampshire, she faces considerable
challenges, “the single biggest” being the lack of transportation for those
needing services, especially in the north country, she says.
“Not being able to get them where they
need to be is a huge roadblock,” she acknowledges, but not an insurmountable
one. Donations of old cars, vans, even bicycles and the consolidation of
probation, treatment and a county drug court all in one location would help
greatly, she notes.
A strong supporter of
medication-assisted treatment, Nadeau finds that the more she sees of the
impact of opioid addiction, the more she sees the need for MAT. “We don’t tell
diabetics to try harder without insulin,” she says, adding, “It’s basically
medical malpractice if we don’t provide that assistance.”
Overall, Nadeau seems optimistic about
the future for drug courts. Media attention to the problem of addiction and the
dissemination of evidence-based information about the effectiveness of drug
courts are contributing to that feeling of optimism. And New Hampshire’s
distinction as the site of the first statewide presidential primary also gives
her cause for hope.
The Granite State, she says, “is in a
great position to put this issue front and center, to have an effect on the
national conversation … to put drug courts in front of prospective presidential
candidates.”
