Drug treatment isn’t the answer

Re “Drug use rearrests up after Prop. 36,” April 14

How can we have a rational public discussion on a subject -- recidivism of drug users -- that is couched in more mysticism than covert operations of the CIA? An honest discussion of the topic would ask why a protocol with at best a 10% to 15% success rate is continually applied year after year. Drug treatment doesn’t work because it’s an incorrect solution to the wrong problem. The real issue is social justice and equal access to housing, employment, wealth, healthcare, psychotherapy, education, legal services -- all the things that most middle-class Americans (who overwhelmingly make up the voting and policymaking class) take for granted. Yet we persist with behavior modification, requiring poor or socially marginalized drug users who are self-medicating serious personal problems to stop applying the balm before addressing the source of their pain. And then we scream “lock them up” when they fail.

PAUL CHERASHORE

Brooklyn, N.Y.

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It would appear that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is determined to jam our prison system with low-level nonviolent drug offenders -- while never fully funding Proposition 36, a voter initiative passed overwhelmingly by the public. He now wishes to overhaul it and add even more jail and prison punishment to a program developed to divert drug offenders from prisons. It is disturbing to think that he would not consider any overhaul or even a study of another voter initiative -- California’s three-strikes law that gives 25-years-to-life sentences to nonviolent drug offenders and costs taxpayers billions -- yet wishes to tinker with one that saves money. I thought the idea was to find ways to reduce our prison population. No wonder a federal judge has threatened to take over our prison system.

FRANK COURSER

Escondido