Proposition 36 was approved just one year ago, yet its detractors are already calling it a failure and urging its repeal. This is despite overwhelming support from California voters, who passed the measure in every one of the state’s 58 counties.
Their message was clear: Californians want accountability and treatment for drug offenders. When properly administered and funded, drug treatment programs work. This sentiment was inspired by another Prop. 36, which was passed by voters in 2000.
The prior Prop. 36 from 2000 drew a blueprint for what works. In a study of its effectiveness, UCLA researchers found that “Prop. 36 programs accounted for 300,000 admissions to treatment services and did so quickly in programs that generated favorable outcomes, all with noteworthy cost savings to state and local governments.”
This history shows that the 2024 Prop. 36 needs more funding, probation officers, treatment options, court capacity and public defenders. It also requires buy-in from leaders across the criminal justice spectrum, including Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has so far been reluctant to sufficiently fund the effort.
The need for proper implementation is essential. Nationally, between 2013 and 2023, fentanyl overdoses and poisonings alone claimed more than 376,000 victims. California voters acted with urgency, but implementation efforts have been met with petulance and parsimonious budgetary support that is barely one fourth of what is needed.
California’s 2025-26 budget totals $321.9 billion, making the Governor’s contribution to Prop. 36’s treatment option a measly 0.03 percent of total state spending.
But the state has the money. Last year, voters passed Prop. 1, which dedicated over $4 billion towards behavioral health spending. Many Prop. 36 supporters believed that additional spending commitments were unnecessary – at a time when the state voted for billions in new spending.
Progressive leaders and some criminal justice advocates believe Prop. 36 marks a return to what they consider an overreliance on incarceration.
Kate Chatfield, executive director of the California Public Defenders Association, said in these pages that “the law is and has always been about increasing incarceration,” while complaining that no money is available and finally remarkably that public defenders are facing a “crushing workload” defending Prop. 36 cases.
She isn’t alone. Cristine Soto-Deberry, founder and executive director of the Prosecutors Alliance, also wrote in these pages that, “as a public defender in Los Angeles in the early 2000s, I represented countless clients battling substance use challenges. The typical response was to lock them up, even for simple possession, offering little to no access to treatment.”
The 300,000 people who received treatment under the earlier Prop. 36 would disagree that there was “little to no access to treatment.”
Chatfield has a point regarding an increased workload, but there is scant evidence that the earlier Prop. 36 contributed to overincarceration of non-violent drug offenders, meaning it’s fanciful to be concerned of that now. CDCR records show that the percentage of inmates incarcerated on drug charges never exceeded 8 percent and is now just 2 percent.
In its first six months of implementation, Prop. 36 has not contributed to the opponents’ predicted increase in prison admissions. As of this writing, the CDCR records indicate a six month increase for all drug offense admissions of just 0.4 percent of a total drug crime inmate drug offense population, which is itself merely 2 percent. That’s fewer than 2,000 inmates incarcerated for drug crimes among all felons.
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Reform-minded San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan has called the level of state funding for Prop. 36 behavioral health services a “joke.” He is correct, it is a joke and it’s a cruel and deadly one. It’s time to choose life and properly fund Prop. 36.
Steve Smith is a senior fellow of urban studies at the Pacific Research Institute.
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