A California bill would bring transparency to addiction treatment | Opinion

California is mired in co-occurring addiction and mental health crises that have left millions of our fellow citizens in dire straits, filled our local jails and helped fuel feelings of vulnerability and insecurity among residents of too many neighborhoods and communities up and down the state.

When more than 1.2 million Californians are living with a severe mental illness and nearly one in 10 individuals aged 12 or older are struggling with a substance use disorder, these crises long ago passed the point of being urgent. We must find the wherewithal to create the treatment and prevention infrastructure that millions of Californians have needed for generations — and fund it to scale.

Last November, California voters passed Proposition 36, which once again allows petty theft and possession of drugs for personal use to be charged as felonies carrying a possible punishment of up to three years in state prison. Under the initiative, people arrested for minor theft or for possessing small amounts of illegal drugs will theoretically be able to escape felony prosecution by choosing to enroll in a treatment program that will address their underlying illnesses, allow them to regain stability and position them to be successful, contributing members of our communities.

We know voters were partially motivated to approve Prop. 36 due to longstanding frustrations with a lack of access to appropriate treatment for individuals struggling with addiction and untreated mental illness, and promises by the initiative’s backers that it would produce treatment that would fully meet existing needs. We must have a clear window into whether that is happening.

That’s why we, along with the Steinberg Institute, an independent non-profit public policy institute dedicated to transforming California’s mental health and substance use care systems, are partnering on Senate Bill 319, the Public Safety Transparency Act, introduced last month to bring accountability and transparency to the implementation of Prop. 36.

The bill requires the superior courts or the California Department of Justice to track and report critical data, including the costs of mandated treatment programs for addicted and/or mentally ill people convicted of felonies, the number of individuals referred to and enrolled in these programs and data-driven results showing if these programs are working (think: recidivism rates, treatment completion percentages and improvements in substance use disorders).

Prop 36 will only succeed if we address the underlying issues that created this crisis. Without additional funding, clear guidelines for program design, or a mechanism for tracking outcomes, we will fail to deliver what voters were promised.

Gov. Gavin Newsom and the legislature should fund more treatment programs and beds for Prop. 36-eligible Californians. But unless the state government is committed to holding district attorneys accountable for actually diverting eligible people into treatment, state and county prison and jail costs will dramatically increase, thereby making it more unlikely that limited state and local funds will be available for treatment.

Without the treatment follow-through, the people Prop.. 36 purports to help will more likely continue to cycle in and out of jail and prison, and intermittently experience homelessness, as is the case now.

Currently, the state doesn’t have sufficient data-gathering systems to carefully tailor drug and mental health treatment services to current needs. For too long, we have simply passed mandates around treatment and then hoped that cities, counties and the state itself would link up the hundreds of thousands of addicted and/or mentally ill Californians with these treatments. Sometimes it happens; too often, however, it doesn’t.

California’s budget deficit makes this issue even more urgent: The state must make every dollar count, and without real data on what works, we will waste taxpayer money on ineffective policies while leaving those who need treatment without a lifeline. It is particularly important that California plug its information gap around treatment programs mandated by the criminal justice system, and that it work out ways to use data to most effectively craft interventions.

SB 319 will give the state the vital tools that it needs to make sure that Prop 36 works.

This story was originally published May 15, 2025 at 6:00 AM.