JOHN BROOKS

An A.C. hero

Addicts who want to get off drugs still face a shortage of treatment
beds in New Jersey. They are still treated as criminals, even though
it is now widely accepted in the medical community that addiction is a
disease. They are still pretty much last on anyone's compassion list.

But today's attitudes are downright enlightened compared to how people
felt in the 1960s and '70s about drug addicts -- back when an Atlantic
City heroin addict named John Brooks got out of prison for the second
time and decided to turn his life around.

Atlantic City was dark, sad and run down in the late '60s and early
'70s. An underclass of heroin addicts thrived, however. And Brooks
decided to do something about it.

He opened a storefront treatment program with a couple of beds and a
catchy name -- NARCO. The group's T-shirts said, "We give a damn." At
the time, the folks at NARCO were the only ones who did.

Most in the community were terrified of Brooks' plans. NARCO would
attract addicts to the city. It would make the city more dangerous.
More grim. And Brooks, with a bushy Afro haircut and a prison record,
was ... well, intimidating.

Few cared that NARCO would actually be helping addicts turn their
lives around.

Today, NARCO is the Institute for Human Development, one of the
largest drug and alcohol treatment facilities in the state, with 116
beds and a $6.3 million budget.

Brooks, retired and living in Florida, died this week from stomach
cancer at the age of 69.

A few days before he died, a group called the Friends of John Brooks
held a fund-raiser in his honor in Atlantic City. They wanted to raise
money to help with his funeral expenses and to set up a scholarship in
his name.

It's the least this community can do for the former heroin addict who
turned his life around -- and, in the process, helped thousands of
others do the same.