On Election Day, California voters grown weary of business as usual in the war on drugs sent politicians an unmistakable message: ''Time out. Let's rethink our strategy.''
A huge majority of voters - more than 60 percent - approved Proposition 36, which requires judges to sentence nonviolent first-time drug users to treatment rather than to jail or prison.
Voter approval signals a remarkable turning point. Nearly every law enforcement interest in California strongly opposed Proposition 36. Police, prosecutors and judges issued dire warnings that the initiative would lead to greater drug abuse. Gov. Gray Davis opposed the measure, as did Attorney General Bill Lockyer. The state's newspapers were nearly unanimous in opposition.
But voters roundly rejected their counsel, voting overwhelmingly for treatment over incarceration. Mindless ''tough on crime'' rhetoric was rejected; voters said they want their government to be ''smart on crime,'' not just punitive.
Many Proposition 36 opponents, including The Bee, strongly supported the need for more treatment but feared that by removing even the threat of jail, the initiative would provide too few incentives for drug users to succeed in treatment and too few tools for law enforcement to control drug trafficking, particularly in vulnerable poor neighborhoods. But now that Proposition 36 is the law, it is the responsibility of state and county officials to make it work.
At the state level, Davis needs to beef up the Department of Alcohol and Drug Programs, the agency that will dispense the $120 million annually that Proposition 36 authorizes for drug treatment. In the two years since he was elected governor, Davis had not even appointed a director of the department - an omission that speaks volumes about government's wrongheaded, dangerous and cruel neglect of treatment.
At the county level, supervisors will need to provide more resources and attention to the perennially underfunded and understaffed probation departments. Under the initiative, probation officers are charged with monitoring the thousands of drug addicts who will now be sentenced to treatment in the community instead of to jail or to prison. Treatment programs must be monitored to ensure legitimacy.
Thoughtful critics of government drug policies have been clamoring for a shift in approach; voters have now handed them a radical transformation. Success can come only with coordinated efforts at every level - a challenge government cannot afford to fail.
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.shns.com.)
