DIVVYING UP OF PROP. 36 FUNDS STARTS

Officials Consider How To Implement Mandated Drug Treatment Program

Passing Proposition 36 was the easy part. Determining who gets how
much of the $660 million the proposition allocates for drug treatment
during the next five and a half years -- the hard part -- began
Monday at a conference in Sacramento.

``You will find it's a lot easier to write a law than administer
it,'' Attorney General Bill Lockyer told the 750 people who attended
the conference, hosted by the Campaign for New Drug Policies, the
group that sponsored Prop. 36.

The conference brought together a spectrum of society's response to
the drug problem: politicians, district attorneys, addiction doctors,
public defenders and treatment professionals. In the past, they have
competed for public funding. Prop. 36 does not put an end to that. It
pits two chronic have-nots -- probation officers and treatment
providers -- against each other.

It costs $26,000 a year to incarcerate an inmate convicted of drug
charges in a state prison. It costs $1,800 to provide a year of
outpatient treatment, said Dr. Gary Jaeger, president-elect of the
California Society of Addiction Medicine. Drug use has always been
seen as a criminal problem with a treatment aspect. Now that the
public sees substance abuse as a treatment problem with a criminal
justice aspect, providers feel the bulk of Prop. 36 money should go
to them.

Probation officers in California typically carry a caseload of 300 or
more, far too many to provide effective oversight. Prop. 36 will
divert 36,000 people a year from jails into treatment, a population
the already overworked probation officers must add to their caseloads.

In Arizona, which passed a similar proposition in 1996, a probation
officer's caseload averages 40 people, a standard the heads of
probation officers unions urged the conference to adopt. Their
position met with a mixed response.

``If we offer intensive supervision, probation departments will eat
up every dollar,'' said Jerry Nadler, a Santa Clara County Superior
Court judge. ``We've got to find a balance between probation and
treatment.''

Nadler suggested that instead of adding hundreds of new probation
officers, each drug court would add a probation officer, who would
advise a judge on a substance abuser's status.

Ralph Miller, president of the 4,000-member Los Angeles County
Probation Union, did not take kindly to the suggestion. The one
consensus on Prop. 36 funding was that it will not be enough to pay
for treatment for every substance abuser arrested. How best to spend
the money?

Looking Over The Options

Should there be a triage system -- some way of determining that
treatment goes to substance abusers who are most motivated to leave
drugs behind? If a judge keeps sending a substance abuser into
treatment and he fails to go and keeps getting re-arrested, should
the judge abandon treatment efforts and send him to jail?

There also were fears that Prop. 36 will cost the legal system more
than it saves in incarceration costs. In Los Angeles County last
year, there were 20,000 arrests for possession of a controlled
substance. Only 1,000 of those cases went to trial.

``We are very concerned that we may have a substantial increase in
the number of trials,'' said Lael Rubin, special counsel to the Los
Angeles County district attorney. ``Defendants will shake the dice
and go to trial. Why not? If they lose, they still go to treatment.''

Though it's unclear which agencies will get what percentage of the
Prop. 36 money, who will allocate the funding is clear. The state
Department of Alcohol and Drug Programs will determine how much is
sent to each of the 58 counties, where the directors of alcohol and
drug services will decide how to spend it.

Kathryn Jett, the department's newly appointed director, said she is
``streamlining'' the process. She did not say whether the money would
be allotted based on population or on the number of offenders
arrested in each county.

Keeping The Public's Faith

Other speakers stressed that if standards to measure the
effectiveness of treatment are not implemented, the public would lose
faith in treatment. Law enforcement and medical officials urged that
money be found to add drug testing, which they believe is necessary
to convince the public that substance abusers will be held
accountable. Standards should also be set for those providing
treatment, they said.

On one thing, the people attending the conference clearly agreed:
Money should be spent on programs, not on studies that dissect the
drug program.

``Please, God: Not one study group will come out of this
conference,'' pleaded Mimi Silbert, CEO of the Delancey Street
Foundation, a nationally known treatment program in San Francisco.
``If we trip, we'll get up, fix the problem and move on. Let's get
the money out to the people who need it.''