Hugs, Not Drugs

This piece was originally written for the San Gabriel Valley Tribune editorial page, and will be published Monday, June 26. They made some edits, of course, and while I appreciate and understand the reasons for those edits in terms of use of editorial language, and not wanting to be too inflamatory or controversial, I still think my original phrasing works better as a piece of persuasive writing. But, you be the judge.

I tightened it up a bit from my original submitted work, adding links to relevant articles and combining paragraphs here and there. Newspapers have an annoying habit of wanting one or two sentence paragraphs. It makes it look nicer in their narrow columns, but looks and feels choppy in a more expansive layout.

By the way, "we" means the newspaper, if you were wondering.

Proposition 36, the 2000 initiative that requires treatment of nonviolent drug offenders rather than jailing them, is in danger of being severely underfunded.

The Substance Abuse and Crime Prevention Act, the law enacted as a result of Proposition 36 originally provided for $120 million in funding for community-based drug treatment programs. The problem is that California is a fast-growing state— the population is expected to increase 22% between 2000 and 2015—and there has been no commensurate raise in funding.

The state budget for next year does include a $25 million increase for the program. But, according to a Sacramento Bee report, that amount still falls more than $64 million short of what a coalition of those in charge of drug treatment programs say is needed.

We're not sure if that $64 million figure is 100% accurate. But, we are sure that the state should determine the actual cost of SACPA programs, consulting with administrators and counsellors doing the grunt work, and then fully fund them. The program is too valuable not to.

We supported Proposition 36 when it was on the ballot for the same reasons we support it today. We believed then, as now, that jailing drug offenders is neither cost-effective nor necessary. Treatment is a more effective path to true rehabilitation.

According to a cost analysis report [PDF] prepared by UCLA, the benefit-cost ratio of SACPA programs is 2.5:1. That means for every dollar spent treating drug offenders we save $2.50 that would have been spent on incarceration. That's an astounding and ringing endorsement of the program on fiscal grounds.

It's also good on a humanitarian basis. By the end of its fifth year, 60,000 people sucessfully graduated from the program. That's 60,000 people who got the help they desperately needed instead of rotting in the prison system.

The dangers of underfunding drug treatment programs are real. Drug offenders are already waiting up to six weeks to enter treatment in Riverside County, according to the Bee. That's six weeks for convicted, untreated drug addicts to potentially commit more crimes to feed their habit. The longer these offenders wait before entering programs the more likely it is that they will drop out when the program begins, and studies back this assertion up.

Proposition 36 is not without its problems. A 2004 UCLA study showed that those sentenced to drug treatment were more likely to be rearrested in a year's time than those who were sentenced to jail. But these are not problems that can be solved by cutting funding. In fact, they're problems that can likely be solved by increasing funding.

The reason for this is that the same UCLA study found that residential treatment is much more effective than outpatient treatment. But, residential treatment costs more, so the vast majority of people don't get it. As a result of underfunding, patients are getting suboptimal care, which could lead to them falling back into their habit.

If they refuse to fully fund drug treatment programs, lawmakers will not only be acting recklessly with our safety, they'll be actively circumventing the will of their constituencies. Proposition 36 was very popular with the voters when it passed, garnering 61 percent of the vote, more than any other initiative that year. It's popularity has only grown since then; in 2004, support was up to 73 percent according to a poll [PDF] by the National Council on Crime and Delinquency.

The governer and legislature should listen to the will of the public, as well as their own common sense and the cold, hard facts, and give Proposition 36 programs the funding they need.