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

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.