by Robert in Monterey [courtesy of Calitics - Front Page]

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Margaret Dooley
Drug Policy Alliance

If Senate Republicans had their way, the legislature would turn its back on the voters. After six years of evidence showing Proposition 36 is a success, Senate Republicans today called on the state to abandon the voter-enacted, landmark law that provides drug treatment instead of incarceration to 36,000 non-violent, low-level drug possession offenders each year. The group has proposed zero funding for the program in 2007-08.

Let’s put this in perspective: approved by 61% of voters in 2000, Prop. 36 is the most significant piece of sentencing reform since the end of Prohibition in 1933. In just six years, the program has saved $1.8 billion and graduated over 70,000 people—who are not adding to dangerous overcrowding in our state’s jails and prisons. Based on these results, de-funding Prop. 36 would clearly be fiscally irresponsible.

But the more important point is that Prop. 36 is not the Senate Republicans’ to abandon.

[courtesy of The California Majority Report]

Open up any Bay Area paper today, and you'll learn that the driver of the gas truck that caused the collapse of the Oakland Maze served time for heroin use -- in 1996. The San Francisco Chronicle is happy to tell us that "[t]he driver of the gasoline tanker truck that overturned and ignited a fire that brought down part of the MacArthur Maze has a criminal record, including a conviction for possession of heroin in 1996 that earned him a 32-month state prison sentence," while the Oakland Tribune notes that "James Mosqueda Sr. accumulated a criminal record stretching from 1974-1996 that includes a misdemeanor hit-and-run; a felony drug possession that garnered him two years in state prison; and a second degree burglary, according to court records for Sacramento and Yolo counties. Yet the 51-year-old Woodland resident was able to obtain a license to haul hazardous materials and pass a Transportation Security Administration background check."

What an outrage! A man last convicted of a minor crime in 1996 -- for heroin use of all things -- managed to acquire a security clearance to drive a truck. Stop the presses. But wait, there's more. Again the Chronicle: