DON'T GUT DRUG-TREATMENT RULES OF PROP. 36

Enacted nearly five years ago, Prop. 36 is a voters' initiative that
mandates the provision of drug treatment to nonviolent drug offenders
convicted for first or second offenses of simple possession.

California voters rocked criminal justice opposition by a 61 percent versus
39 percent margin in overwhelmingly demanding a public-health approach to
addictions.

Three years' worth of data has just been analyzed by researchers at UCLA
who have found that Prop. 36 is working well. More than a third (34.3
percent) complete their treatment as ordered. Another 7.3 percent are
discharged from treatment with a rating of "satisfactory progress." Almost
twice as many patients are employed at the end of treatment as were at the
beginning, having gone from being tax consumers to taxpayers.

All this at 10 percent of the cost of incarceration. These outcomes are
comparable to rates found in diverse treatment and specialized drug court
settings.

Despite the overwhelming evidence that Prop. 36 saves hundreds of millions
of dollars and improves thousands of lives, we physicians find ourselves
again disputing police, prosecutors and corrections officers who assisted
Sen. Denise Moreno Ducheny, D-Chula Vista, in drafting Senate Bill 803 to
"improve" Prop. 36. This bill is scheduled for debate Aug. 23 in the
Assembly Public Safety Committee, chaired by Mark Leno of San Francisco.

The California Society of Addiction Medicine opposes provisions of SB 803
that would impose jail sanctions on Prop. 36 clients who fail to show up
for an appointment with a drug counselor or who submit a dirty drug test.
We believe these provisions undermine the public's defining intent to shift
from a criminal justice to a public-health model.

Ducheny's bill argues that amendments will modify Prop. 36 to follow the
drug court model.

While we believe that drug courts can be effective, they have a number of
sanctions (community service, court appearances, urine toxicology testing)
and structures (liaisons with treatment facilities, social work
assessments, probation visits) that other courts don't. In no way will
simply returning broad incarceration powers to sitting judges turn their
courts into the "drug court model," as has been asserted by some
enthusiasts of SB 803.

The state Legislature's own lawyers have written that elements of SB 803
would violate the intent and purpose of Prop. 36. SB 803 is bad medicine,
bad policy - and a repudiation of drug-war-weary California voters.