DRUG PROGRAM CHIEF NAMED BY DAVIS; IS TO IMPLEMENT PROP. 36

SACRAMENTO (AP) -- Nearly two years after he took office, and days after
voters approved a sweeping drug treatment initiative, Gov. Gray Davis
appointed his first director of the Department of Alcohol and Drug Programs.

Meanwhile yesterday, backers of the Proposition 36 initiative threatened to
sue Davis if he does not immediately release $60 million for drug treatment
authorized by voters a week earlier.

Davis appointed Kathryn Jett to head the department and oversee
implementation of the ballot measure, which requires the state to treat a
projected 36,000 drug users each year instead of sending them to prison or
jail.

"He'd rather make the right choice than the hasty choice," Davis
spokeswoman Hilary McLean said in explaining the delay in making the
appointment.

Jett, 47, is director of the attorney general's Crime and Violence
Prevention Center and chairs the executive committee of the nonpartisan
Crime Prevention Coalition of America. Previously she was head of the
Department of Health Services' Office of Women's Health.

She'll be paid $123,255 in her new job. The appointment is subject to state
Senate confirmation.

Drug treatment providers have complained that a series of acting directors
left the agency rudderless.

"There's no voice for drug and alcohol programs speaking for the
administration," said William Demers, president of the County Alcohol and
Drug Program Administrators Association of California, before Jett's
appointment. "Without a director, we've gotten no answers from anybody on
anything from the administration."