PROPS. 5 AND 8 WILL MAKE WAVES NATIONALLY

Although hardly anyone's noticed, billionaire financier George Soros
and some other very deep pockets are back on the California ballot
with a drug and criminal sentencing reform measure that makes their
prior efforts seem modest.

Given the prison mess we've locked ourselves into, Soros' proposal
may be the brightest light on a bleak horizon.

This one, Proposition 5, called NORA, the Nonviolent Offender
Rehabilitation Act, is a monster plan designed to direct many more
drugusing lawbreakers to treatment and keep them out of the slammer.
It puts more money into diversion and rehabilitation for both adults
and youthful offenders, for whom there is now no drug treatment program at all.

It's a complicated and costly plan, running to an estimated $1
billion a year. It would allocate more resources to treatment,
probation and parole. But the Legislative Analyst's Office believes
it could save the state as much money, especially in prison
construction, as it will cost, and maybe more.

The numbers are a little iffy. Nonetheless, the LAO says the program
could reduce the state's adult inmate population, now roughly 171,000
prisoners, by 18,000 at $46,000 per year apiece, that's not peanuts
and reduce the rolls of parolees by an additional 22,000.

NORA is part of what's become a long procession of drug reform and
criminal sentencing reforms underwritten by Soros, John Sperling, the
founder of the private for-profit University of Phoenix, and a group
of other rich liberals.

They funded California's Proposition 215 in 1996 and a string of
similar measures in other states legalizing the medical use of
marijuana, as well as a variety of other drug "harm reduction" laws.
Among them was California's Proposition 36 to divert drug using
offenders to treatment instead of prison.

Proposition 5 expands on that idea, creates "rehabilitation wardens"
in the prison system and makes possession of small amounts of
marijuana an infraction, not a misdemeanor. All those changes are
part of a larger strategy by Soros and his co-sponsors to radically
reform U.S. drug-control policy, with its vast establishment of narcs
and other drug cops, by shifting from a criminal model to a medical
model, as much of Europe has done.

Proposition 5 has strong opposition from the leaders of the National
Association of Drug Court Professionals, which, in the words of one
of its California members, Jeffrey Thoma, the public defender of
Solano County, is based "on misunderstanding and misinformation" and
was adopted "using heavy-handed tactics."

Conversely, Proposition 5 has the endorsement of a long list of
California individuals and groups, from the League of Women Voters
and organizations representing physicians and drug and alcohol abuse
counselors to labor unions, the former warden of San Quentin Prison
and former director of the state Department of Corrections to
conservative libertarians like former Secretary of State George Shultz.

If Proposition 5 passes, it could ring bells in the new Congress,
elected on the same day, that Americans are ready for a new drug
strategy. Congress, in its fear of being tarred as soft on drugs, has
so far ignored all the other ballot measures.

But given the general fatigue of right-wing ideology, the messages
might be heard this time. A growing number of Americans are beginning
to understand that the countless billions we're spending on tracking
down and incarcerating users, the additional billions in overseas
interdiction and eradication, and the human and property cost of the
crimes addicts commit to sustain their habit may not be worth the price.

In the same liberalizing context, the outcome of another November
initiative, also with a lot of out-of-state support, could send an
even louder message. That's the defeat of Proposition 8, the
initiative that would overturn the state Supreme Court's decision
that struck down California's prior laws prohibiting same-sex marriage.

Eight years ago, Californians, in approving Proposition 22, passed
one of those laws with 62 percent of the votes. Last week's poll from
PPIC, the Public Policy Institute of California, showed that support
for Proposition 8 was now at 40 percent, with 54 percent opposing it.

With nine weeks before Election Day, that's not an absolutely certain
indicator of defeat, but since almost nothing with less than a strong
poll majority in September is approved in November, you'd be a fool
to bet on its passage.

The defeat of the gay marriage ban will be dismissed in some places
as just another example of California's hopeless left-coast
extremism, but if you look at the nation's drift in the past seven or
eight years on George W. Bush, on the war on Iraq, on global warming
and energy efficiency it's clear that California wasn't so much out
of it as ahead of it.

Ditto for our demographics. In 30-some years, according to the
census, non-Hispanic whites will be a minority, just as they are in
California now. It's not always obvious that the nation goes as
California goes, but that's mostly because it's slow getting there.