California's Prop. 5 Could Change the Course of America's Drug War

By Silja J.A. Talvi, AlterNet. Posted November 1, 2008.

It was in Los Angeles in 1983, while I was attending John Burroughs Junior High, when I recall coming home and tuning into an episode of the popular ABC sitcom, Diff'rent Strokes. I remember watching intently as First Lady Nancy Reagan teetered onto the screen.

I watched that show the way I did most other American sitcoms having to do with race relations, with a studious blend of curiousity, fascination, and burgeoning media criticism. I hadn't been born in the U.S., but I'd been living in the diverse megalopolis since 1977. That was long enough to know that this country had rather serious, unresolved problems when it came to skin color, class, ethnicity, culture and language.

To say nothing of drug use.

There was no way to avoid it. Most of the kids in my public school were not from well-to-do families, but the children of the well-to-do were actually the first kids I saw with illicit drugs and cigarettes -- that was back in elementary school. After that point, I saw cigarette, drug and alcohol use everywhere, all around me, whether at the hands of rich kids buying and selling pills and powder for weekend parties, or self-destructing teens trying to flush trauma out of their bodies with copious amounts of Olde English malt liquor.

Standing in front of the television in our living room, I remember thinking, most vividly, that Nancy Reagan's head was enormous. I also clearly remember the smiles plastered on the cast member's faces as she adopted a motherly tone and explained that what the kids had to do was to "just say no to drugs."

It was an amazing bit of an accomplishment for the federal government's anti-drug crusade: let's work with Hollywood to beam the message straight into American homes, using one of the most popular shows on television at the time.

The thinking behind Nancy Reagan's appearance on Diff'rent Strokes probably went something like this: make it stern, but friendly. We want the kids to know that everything is just fine, and that everything will stay calm, as long as they say "no."

With the War on Drugs, the accompanying, implicit threat is also always there, whether it's spoken or not: If you don't listen to us, if you make a different decision, all bets are off. Once you use actually use an illicit drug -- and especially if you dare to sell one -- you have become something 'other.'

You have become a criminal.

The kind of criminal that California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was talking about when he announced his opposition to Proposition 5, the Nonviolent Offender Rehabilitation Act of 2008 (NORA), at a news conference this past week, in front of the Criminal Courts Building in downtown Los Angeles.

"[Proposition 5] is a great threat to our neighborhoods," Schwarzenegger was quoted as saying this week by the Los Angeles Times. "It was written by those who care more about the rights of criminals." Republican Gov. Schwarzenegger made his statement standing alongside four previous California governors: Gray Davis and Jerry Brown, both Democrats, and Republicans Pete Wilson and George Deukmejian.

Side-by-side, these five different men had the same, rabidly oppositional message about the sheer "danger" of Proposition 5, which is designed to divert tens of thousands of non-violent drug users away from incarceration; expand youth programs to prevent substance abuse and imprisonment; and mandate a continuum of rehabilitation and treatment options both during and after incarceration for people sentenced to do time.

Many initiatives and pieces of legislation end up being little more than hastily-conceived, reactionary proposals to what are perceived as public safety threats. This cannot be said of Proposition 5. In fact, NORA's drug treatment/education diversion is based around a well-conceived, three-tier system based on real clinical assessments, public safety, prior convictions, and ongoing evaluations (conducted by a new, 23-member Treatment Diversion Oversight and Accountability Commission), to make sure that the program is working as intended.

The proposition has been years in the making, in consultation with drug addiction recovery and rehabilitation experts, research scientists, even law enforcement and corrections personnel. The initiative is a big one, both in text length and impact: According to the independent Legislative Analyst's Office (LAO), the measure would require $1 billion in spending each year, something that would be completely offset by $1 billion in savings from the ever-increasing prison and parole budget in the State of California. To boot, the LAO projects an additional net savings of $2.5 billion over the next few years because unnecessary prison construction would not be undertaken.

The cost savings are undeniable, and terribly necessary. Currently, the cost to operate the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) stands at $10 billion, and operating capacity in some prisons exceeds 200%. Federal District Court Judge Thelton Henderson has given state officials under November 5th to cough up $250 million toward new prison healthcare facilities, or else face the likely possibility of a federal take-over. With at least one death a week attributable to inadequate and negligent healthcare, the CDCR has already been found to be in constitutional violation of the Eighth Amendment banning cruel and unusual punishment. This past week, the state's youth detention system was also under fire again, when Alameda County Superior Court Judge Jon Tigar accused the Division of Juvenile Justice of failing to take "even the most basic, fundamental steps to implement reform."

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Silja J.A. Talvi is an investigative journalist and the author of Women Behind Bars: The Crisis of Women in the U.S. Prison System (Seal Press: 2007). Her work has already appeared in many book anthologies, including It's So You (Seal Press, 2007), Prison Nation (Routledge: 2005), Prison Profiteers (The New Press: 2008), and Body Outlaws (Seal Press: 2004). She is a senior editor at In These Times.

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