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2 September 2000 - The San Diego Union-Tribune
Battle rages over Prop. 36

By Marty Graham

SAN DIEGO – A widely supported ballot initiative that would mandate drug treatment instead of jail for first-time offenders has sparked an intense battle in the county, where people who agree that treatment beats jail are squaring off over who controls the details of the drug courts.

And funding appears to be the battle of the Greek titans: billionaire idealist and philanthropist George Soros has pumped nearly $250,000 into passing the statewide initiative, while San Diego Chargers owner Alex Spanos has chipped in $100,000 opposing it.

Caught in the middle are parents, counties without drug courts and drug treatment providers who don't have enough money to treat the people they would like to treat. San Diego County created the first drug court in North County and will expand the North County drug courts in January.

The debate over Proposition 36 promises to be confusing to voters, since the positions are so similar and the endorsements on both sides come from very prominent officials.

"I'm very confused by this and I'm in the middle of it," said Deborah Peterson, of the Scripps Medical Clinic's rehabilitation facility. "I don't know what to (say) the differences are and I don't know how I'll explain it to my colleagues, so how will we explain this to the public?"

At public debates, like the one held by the San Diego Association of Governments on Friday, supporters and opponents square off over seemingly minor points: how much drug testing, what kind of arrests, who decides which people get help.

"Both sides are right in many regards, but it has to be done in the right way," said Superior Court Judge Bonnie Dumanis, who helped found San Diego's drug courts. "If we had been consulted early on (in writing the initiative), we could have made it a great proposition."

The initiative, slated for the November ballot, allots $120 million per year to send first time, nonviolent offenders to drug treatment rather than jail – with jail terms as the final option if they fail treatment. The money would be the first infusion of statewide money for treatment of drug offenders.

Proponents say that the program will save the state up to $1.2 billion in prison costs, and that there are at least 24,000 people arrested each year who could end up in treatment rather than prison. They say the counties will control how the money is spent and the courts will decide how the drug programs are run.

While they admire the pilot programs in San Diego, Prop. 36 supporters say most California counties have no drug courts and it's time to expand the county test program to the whole state – and add real money to the effort.

"We take no money and no control away from existing programs," said Robert Zimmerman, the campaign manager for the initiative. "But we would like to reach more than just those 2 percent of the people you are reaching now."

Opponents, primarily from San Diego County, say the local drug courts will lose their most effective controls over offenders: drug testing and being able to toss the offender who tests positive into jail for a few days.

They also say that the proposition limits those who qualify to people arrested for simple possession, and they point to statistics that show most people who have drug problems are arrested for other offenses, such as traffic offenses, petty theft and disorderly conduct. Those people would not be sent to treatment, said San Diego County Public Defender Steven Carroll.

Supporters statewide include San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, several police organizations, the city councils of Berkeley, Oakland and San Francisco, The California Labor Federation, the California Society of Addiction Medicine, The California Nurses Association, and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

Soros, the New York billionaire philanthropist who has pumped millions of his own dollars into developing nations and innovative economic programs, also supports the initiative, based on his observation that the drug war has been a costly social failure resulting in the mass incarceration of minorities.

Opponents in San Diego start with the Board of Supervisors, District Attorney Paul Pfingst and the Superior Court judges who are running the drug courts. Spanos, the Stockton millionaire owner of the San Diego Chargers, did not respond to calls for comment on his $100,000 donation to support the opposition.

Among the opposition ranks are drug treatment providers and law enforcement – all of whom rely on the county for most or all of their operating budgets.

"Those opposed to this legislation are a frightened group of people who are afraid that, come the next election, some one will put an ad on television saying they are soft on drug and they will lose," Zimmerman said of the county officials.

But the county officials and contractors say they are also running the most successful combination of criminal justice and drug treatment the nation has seen and they know how it should be done.

On Friday, Dr. Cleo Malone, the director of a substance abuse rehab program that contracts with the county, stepped Out Of the county-led opponents' lineup to ask an obvious question:

"Why does this have to be 'either-or' instead of 'and'?" Malone asked. "I'm thinking of the people who are suffering."

"I'm thinking about the lack of gang participation in the program and it is our African-American and Latino youth who are being affected by drugs and left out of the program and imprisoned," he added.

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