CRITICS: CHANGES TO DRUG LAW AFFRONT TO VOTERS

Drug treatment advocates have gone on the offensive to prevent what
they say is an imminent gutting of California's treatment-not-jail
law.

The Drug Policy Alliance and the California Society of Addiction
Medicine bought a full-page ad in Monday's Sacramento Bee urging
lawmakers not to let language inserted in a budget trailer bill -- due
for a vote this week -- reverse the will of voters who approved the
existing law as Proposition 36 of 2000.

They are most upset because this language would let judges use two to
five days of jail time to punish relapses -- "flash incarceration,"
which they say does not make treatment more effective and dilutes the
law's original intent. They also oppose a new clause they call too
lenient, letting people stay in Proposition 36-mandated drug treatment
even after committing a nondrug crime such as theft, fraud or domestic
violence.

The budget bill's contents are drawn fromSB 803 by state Sen. Denise
Ducheny, D-San Diego, which these groups long have opposed. The
Assembly Public Safety Committee -- chaired by Mark Leno, D-San
Francisco, a Proposition 36 supporter -- held a public hearing on SB
803 in August but delayed its vote. That vote finally was to be held
last Tuesday, but Ducheny pulled her bill at the last minute and moved
its language into the budget trailer.

The law as passed by 61 percent of voters in November 2000 earmarked
$120 million per year, but that funding sunsets at the end of this
fiscal year. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger now proposes $145 million in
Proposition 36 funding for 2006-07, but he has asked that the spending
be made contingent upon implementing Ducheny's changes.

committee vote, the funding and the policy upon which it depends
should be united in one bill.

Ducheny and supporters of the changes she proposes insist the
adjustments would create more accountability and improve chances of
successful treatment. Critics say the changes are backed by the same
law enforcement groups that opposed Proposition 36 to start with and
now hope to gut it.

Margaret Dooley, running the Drug Policy Alliance's outreach program
on Proposition 36, said whether it is Ducheny's SB 803 or a budget
trailer bill, it is "a fundamental challenge" to the existing law.

"The people voted for this. To try to rewrite the initiative,
especially in a secretive budget trailer, is highly offensive to the
practice of democracy in California."

The alliance vows to sue to block any changes it believes violate the
original law's intent and purpose. In fact, a clause in the trailer
bill requires that the whole bill automatically be put on the ballot
if a court strikes any part of it down.

"They know they're going to lose" in court, Dooley said
Monday.

Dooley and other advocates also say $145 million will not even cover
treatment at current levels, much less account for inflation or the
added difficulty of treating more long-term addicts than originally
expected. With treatment costing about $3,300 per year while
imprisonment costs about $34,000 per year, sinking more money into
Proposition 36 is among the best investments California can make, they
say.