SENATE BILL WOULD DISMANTLE DRUG TREATMENT EFFORT THAT WORKS

When voters approved Proposition 36 four years ago, they meant to reverse a
failed drug policy that emphasized punishment over treatment. Punishing
addiction had failed to make a dent in the problem, and ruined tens of
thousands of lives.

But now died-in-the-wool drug warriors, led by prosecutors and narcotics
officers, are trying to undo Proposition 36 in the Legislature. It's the
latest act in an unseemly history of second-guessing voters and overturning
popular initiatives.

Proposition 36 requires drug treatment, not jail or prison, for the first
two non-violent drug possession offenses. Its impact is already dramatic:

* In 2000, California held 20,116 prison inmates whose most serious offense
was drug possession. Today, 7,337 fewer people are imprisoned for possession.

* A women's prison was closed, and plans for a new men's prison were
scrapped, saving taxpayers $500 million.

* Lives are being saved. More than 30,000 people enter Proposition 36 drug
treatment annually. More than 10,000 successfully completed treatment the
first year. The law is on pace to help 50,000 people complete treatment in
its first five years.

These successes are even more impressive in light of data showing that
Proposition 36 treatment clients are older, and more severely addicted,
than expected. Many are parolees, a group that has been highly resistant to
treatment previously.

Despite this progress, opponents of Proposition 36 never gave up the fight
they lost before voters. They've inspired Sen. Denise Moreno Ducheny,
D-Chula Vista, to introduce SB 803, to radically change Proposition 36. It
limits the number of people eligible for treatment and makes treatment in
jail, not community-based programs, the norm. Prosecutors and judges could
jail clients at the first hint of trouble during treatment.

Critics say we must rewrite Proposition 36 because too few people are
complying with their Proposition 36 treatment. They're wrong.

Nearly three in four people who enter Proposition 36 treatment (72.2
percent) spend enough time there to receive what researchers call a
"standard dose." Even for those who don't finish, treatment pays both
immediate and long-term dividends. During treatment, people are less likely
to use drugs or commit crimes. Afterward, they are further along in a
journey toward recovery.

Proposition 36 compares well with other systems linking treatment and
criminal justice. A state-sponsored evaluation found that 34.4 percent of
the people who began Proposition 36 treatment completed it. The same study
found that 36 percent of all other criminal-justice referrals completed
their treatment. Not much difference.

The state's "drug court" system is often held up as a model -- Santa Clara
County's program in particular. In several years before Proposition 36,
drug courts had a 41.8 percent completion rate statewide -- albeit with a
much smaller, handpicked group of drug offenders. Data show that
Proposition 36 clients are more severely addicted than those in drug court
before. Again, there is no striking difference in success rates.

Sen. Ducheny's bill pushes the mistaken idea that jail can be treatment,
not punishment. But no studies indicate that putting Proposition 36
treatment clients in jail would improve success rates. Out of dozens of
studies of drug courts in California and elsewhere, not one shows that jail
time keeps clients in treatment. One study suggests the opposite -- people
in two separate drug courts who got jail time as a "sanction" were more
likely to fail treatment.

What's worse, the changes in SB 803 destroy the essence of Proposition 36
as a health care-based intervention. If all counties used about the same
amount of jail time as Santa Clara County's drug court does, they could
spend $90 million per year to jail Proposition 36 treatment clients. Many
counties would have to release more serious offenders from jail to make
room. And money would come out of treatment, swinging the pendulum back to
an emphasis on punishment.

What Proposition 36 needs is more money targeted for treatment. The program
works. Now let's expand it so we can save more lives and more money. The
last thing we need is state legislators thwarting the will of the people by
subverting another popular initiative. Given that Proposition 36 won with
61 percent of the vote, and has delivered on its promise, any legislator
who gets in the way of this progress is likely to get run over.