CALIFORNIA REGROUPING IN DRUG WAR

SAN FRANCISCO -- California, which jails more drug users per capita than any
other state, now must quickly change course and implement the most
ambitious drug-treatment program in U.S. history.

Last week's passage of Proposition 36, a sweeping initiative requiring
treatment instead of imprisonment for an estimated 36,000 drug users each
year, thrusts California into mostly uncharted territory.

But as counties rush to make the change by July 1, they can learn from San
Francisco, which has bucked the state for years by diverting nonviolent
drug offenders into treatment, and Arizona, where voters approved a similar
initiative four years ago.

Arizona hands out tickets to movies and sporting events and holds picnics
for drug offenders who complete treatment programs - anything to reward
them for staying clean with the threat of jail no longer hanging over their
heads.

"It's changed the whole way in which we kind of play the game," said
Barbara Broderick, Arizona's state director of adult probation. "Now that
you have this law, you really have to embrace it and figure out how to make
an incentive-based program work without the hammer."

California's program, scheduled to begin July 1, likely will cost much more
than the $120 million a year allocated by Proposition 36. But projections
say much of the cost will be offset because treatment is cheaper than
building and operating prisons.

While Arizona can serve as an example, California's statewide change in
direction is of much greater magnitude.

Arizona had to find 4,000 new treatment slots to handle about 6,000
offenders each year. California will have six times as many offenders, and
its existing community treatment programs already have long waiting lists.

San Francisco still can't find enough treatment slots five years after
District Attorney Terence Hallinan made it his policy to funnel many drug
offenders into treatment programs. His office handles 8,000 felony drug
arrests each year, 60 percent of its caseload.

Mimi Silbert, president and chief executive of the Delancey Street
Foundation, San Francisco's largest treatment provider and the nation's
largest privately funded treatment program, worries that California
mistakenly will turn to quick-fix treatment programs.

"It's a complex issue and it requires a complex solution," Silbert said.
"The danger is to jump in quickly, to make the assumption that because
they're not going to jail their problem is solved."

"We're finding that 25 percent of people sentenced to probation are
thumbing their nose at the system," said Special Assistant District
Attorney Barnett Lotstein in Arizona's Maricopa County, which includes
Phoenix. "People are walking away from treatment."

Without the threat of jail, Arizona has tried punishing offenders with more
frequent court appearances, treatment sessions and community service.
"We'll even have them read books and give book reports in open court," said
Broderick. "We've tried to be very creative with our sanctions."

San Francisco has a "mentor diversion court" for 18- to 25-year-old
small-time drug dealers that combines intense supervision with a
requirement that participants work toward a high-school diploma and attend
college classes.

Yet, in three years barely 200 drug offenders have participated.

San Francisco Sheriff Michael Hennessey, a supporter of treatment programs,
warns that some drug offenders are going to commit headline-grabbing crimes
while undergoing treatment.

"You will have spectacular failures, and you can't scuttle your approach
because of those failures," Hennessey said. "You have people who are
philosophically opposed (to Proposition 36) and they are looking for the
failures to fan the flames of law-and-order."