Matt: June 2006 Archives

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.

Only, you know, minus the fellatio.

Sorry for the silence recently. I swear I'm going to make an effort to keep this thing going. I've just been busy lately.

I'm about a quarter of the way through my internship now. It's going pretty well, I'm interning on the Opinions page at the San Gabriel Valley Tribune. It's a pretty standard, garden variety, suburban newspaper. My coworkers are great though. It's nice working with people who actually have an opinion and who are well informed on things. A lot of the talk around the office is San Gabriel Valley-specific, and I live a bit of a drive away from there, so a lot of the names go over my head. But I do enjoy talking and debating substantive issues.

My only complaint so far is I don't quite have enough to do. Most of my work has been choosing which letters to the editor get published and editing them, coming up with editorial ideas, researching for editorials and even writing my own editorials. But there's a lot of downtime while I wait for my boss to give me new assignments. It's really great actually being published though. So many internships involve gofer work or copying and faxing or other things that teach you to be a temp rather than a journalist. This one I'm actually getting experience and building my portfolio.

Speaking of which, here are the two editorials I've written so far:

• My first one was based on an Expedia.com survey I tracked down showing that Americans aren't taking their vacation days. I wasn't totally enthralled with the subject and it was heavily edited, a good chunk of the end was sliced off. So, I'm not totally proud of this. It is the first thing I've ever written to be published outside of the school newspaper though, so that's something.
• The second, just published today, was a subject I found more interesting. Driven crazy by high gas prices some SUV owners were resorting to arson to collect the insurance money. From there it goes into ways you can save gas and money without resorting to such drastic means

So, if I'm a bit quiet for the next few weeks it's because I already spend all day writing and dealing with words. I'll try and squeeze more blogging in, though.

I went to my first ever Catholic mass yesterday. It was the day of my good friend Monica's confirmation. I grew up in an area with more Catholics than Protestants and had many friends who were Catholic growing up, so I'm not sure how I avoided it this long.

I found that most of the clichés you hear about mass are true. It's overlong, overly liturgical, and often times downright boring. The communion portion in particular seemed interminable. However, when it came time for the priest to deliver his homily to those who had just been confirmed, I gained a newfound respect for the Catholic Church.

The priest spoke about things I had rarely or never heard in the evangelical church I grew up in, and I had certainly never heard them all addressed at the same time. He spoke about the dehumanizing effects of war, obliquely referencing the current news about the apparent Haditha massacre. He talked about the evils of racism and intolerance. He implored his newly annointed saints to seek social justice in their communities. I thought it was truly inspiring, and in the days of the ascendence of the Christian right, somewhat shocking.

One thing I've never really enjoyed about working in groups at school (I mean, besides my distaste for working in groups in general) is that I sometimes find myself arguing positions I don't believe in. Such was the case with the final project for my class in Public Opinion, Propaganda and the Mass Media. My group, and by extension I, had to argue that the media's portrayal of the Barry Bonds steroids issue rises to such odious means as to be considered propaganda. Something I don't believe is true.

From the looks of things, Bonds really was on steroids, and maybe still is. I acknowledge that nothing has been definitively proven and that most of the allegations come from a single source, but that single source is meticulously researched and seems to be beyond reproach. Now if it turns out the book was wrong I will of course, retract my position. But it is the media's right, perhaps even its duty, to give credible accusations like this one publicity. I admit I'm woefully unknowledgable about the whole affair and that most of what I now know is the product of a few days research for a class presentation. I don't even give a shit about sports 99.5% of the time.

That's not to say I don't think the sports media have done a crappy job covering the issue. Of the thousands and thousands of published articles you'd be hard pressed to find one that is not sensationalistic in nature and designed to destroy the career and reputation of Bonds before he's been proven guilty. But that doesn't mean that he's innocent. And these are allegations that, if true, should rightly tarnish his image. It just means, like usual, that the media sucks.