Our View: A more humane approach

Opponents of Proposition 5, a modest reform of California's drug laws and parole practices designed in part to help alleviate the woeful crowding of the state prison system, paint a scary picture of what will happen if voters approve this measure. Parole for methamphetamine dealers will be shortened from three years to six months! Lock the doors!

Well, yes, the measure will reduce parole to six months from three years for a wide range of nonviolent crimes, reducing the stress on the parole system. But parole eligibility for certain violent crimes actually will be increased, in some cases from the current maximum of four years to five years. So if that former meth dealer — who will have actually undergone drug treatment and education while in prison — does anything violent, it's back to prison.

Prop. 5 would expand drug treatment for nonviolent drug offenders and reduce the use of incarceration as a way to deal with addicts and other drug users. It builds on Prop. 36, which voters passed in 2000 and which puts certain nonviolent drug users into rehabilitation rather than jail or prison. Prop. 36 has saved taxpayers about $2 billion and graduated 84,000 people with drug problems from rehabilitation programs. It hasn't been perfect, but it has been productive. Prop. 5 would build on that success.

Prop. 5 would increase the number of nonviolent drug offenders, including vulnerable young people, who receive rehabilitation rather than imprisonment. It would require prisons to offer drug rehabilitation programs, which most do not do presently.

Over time, according to the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office, it should save taxpayers considerable money. To be sure, it will appropriate $460 million a year for rehabilitation programs. But the LAO estimates that while the cumulative cost could reach $1 billion, it would at the same time save about $1 billion in prison and parole expenses. Over time it should save Californians $2.5 billion or more in capital costs for prison construction.

Prop. 5 also reduces possession of less than an ounce of marijuana from a misdemeanor to an infraction (similar to a traffic ticket). This will have little enforcement impact, since current law makes such possession a misdemeanor punishable by a $100 fine, which will remain.

It is becoming increasingly clear that the expensive and counterproductive "war on drugs" is not working. Drug addiction can be tragic for individuals and their families. But most of the ancillary damage to society — increased street crime, funding gang activity, fundraising crimes like burglary, robbery and mugging — are caused by the laws against drugs rather than the drugs themselves. Prop. 5 is a modest step toward a more humane and productive approach to the problem of drug use than the strictly punitive approach that has failed so abysmally.

We recommend a "yes" vote on Prop. 5.