"Most legislators have absolutely no experience with substance abuse, and they tend to look at (addiction) as a self-inflicted gunshot wound," Fleming said. "They (addicts) did it to themselves" and therefore should pay the price themselves.

When Fleming goes before the Legislature to plead for more funding for drug treatment, lawmakers weigh his request against funding for senior citizens, the disabled and abused children.

"Ours is not a very sympathetic population," he admits.

The treatment community has, by and large, failed to sway lawmakers to change their thinking about substance abuse or to convince them that treatment will save the state money.

They find lawmakers skeptical when they present research by scientists showing addiction is a chronic brain disease that can be successfully treated with a combination of medical and psychiatric treatments.

"We have not been able to crack that nut," Fleming said. "And we probably won't anytime soon."

Ruzicka, for one, believes "we shouldn't expect the average citizen to pay for people who have gotten themselves in these messes. It's not right," she said. "It's not the proper role of government."

Churches and private foundations, she said, do a far better job at rehabilitation and treatment than government ever will.

Jack shakes his head, wondering how it is he ever came to smoke heroin the first time. The 30-year-old computer programmer had experimented with drugs at the University of Utah years before, but it was always recreational and always occasional.

In 1994, he and some friends — including the son of his employer — were watching a television news report on the drug problem at Pioneer Park. He remembers saying, "Hey, let's go down there and see what it's all about."

"I told myself it was a one-time deal, but I kept going back and going back. Seven or eight months later I knew I was hooked."

And his life spiraled out of control.

"One day I am a successful young guy who had everything, and in a few months I had quit my job, I wouldn't shower for days at a time and I would never leave the house. I was hopeless." When his friends started going to jail and his cash reserves had dwindled to next to nothing, he knew he wanted out. He was desperate and depressed.

Five years ago, he entered a treatment program and has been clean ever since. He is now a manager for a computer company, and he still gets a daily dose of methadone to deal with the addiction.

"Nobody at this point has any idea of what I used to be," he said. "They would never believe it."

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Tomorrow: Addiction as a disease.