Proposition 36

PROP 36----Where’s the beef?


http://www.adp.ca.gov/pdf/SACPAEvaluationReport.pdf


I have been waiting for about 3 years for the UCLA report on proposition 36 (The law that mandates treatment for drug addicts in California instead of incarceration). The prop 36 law itself mandates that UCLA study the effectiveness as well as the financial impact of prop 36. At last I thought we are going to get some reliable statistics on how effective the drug treatment industries so-called treatment is,not the usually waffling one gets when you try and find out how effective a drug treatment program really is. Californians are finally going to get to find out how many people have actually got off drugs and stayed off as a result of the millions of dollars that have been spent. Silly me to think such a thing.


First of all, reading the report is a bit like walking on nails or deciphering hieroglyphics. It’s written by academics and not really in a common sense way that is easy to understand. As I read the report I finally came to this:

“Compared to pre-SACPA drug use, abstinence increased among SACPA offenders in the follow-up period”--see Chapter 5 of the 2004 SCAPA Evaluation Report for further details


Wait a minute here. No new details or surveys or statistics? Just regurgitating what was said in 2004? How can they get away with that? Big money was paid to UCLA for the report. And besides I read the previous report in 2004 and the question of rate of success wasn’t adequately answered then. That's why I had been waiting. And the law requires a study on Prop 36 effectiveness.

I went back and looked at the 2004 report. It has no long term follow up statistics on abstinence. All the 2004 report had was a 1 year follow up and all they asked them about was their drug use 30 days prior to the interview (and it was self reporting at that!).Anybody think a dopefiend might lie?

The 2004 report says this: "Among offenders who were assessed but did not receive treatment, 34.6% reported drug use in the past 30 days; among those who entered but did not complete treatment, 27.4%; and among those who completed treatment, 17.7%. The difference between completers and each other group was statistically significant."

So the UCLA researchers want Californians to believe that abstinence increased among those who completed treatment by 16.9% based on a 30 day snapshot 4 years ago? They want us to believe Prop 36 has a 82.3% success rate based on that?

How many of those people who completed "treatment" eventually relapsed? We don’t know; the study didn’t tell us. What is the long-term abstinence success rate of Prop 36? We don’t know that either. The study we paid for didn’t tell us. And anyone who has worked with drug addicts know that many go back to drug use after a period of clean time.

All of the above didn’t stop the report from saying that Propistion 36 needs an additional 228.6 million dollars or the second annual “Prop 36 works” rally in Sacramento.

Call me skeptical if you will, but I think before we fork out 228.6 million MORE dollars we are at least entitled to know the real statistics on how many people are actually staying off drugs as a result of prop 36..

And shame on the researchers who didn’t answer the questions they were hired to answer.