California must fund drug treatment programs for repeat offenders | Opinion

In 2024, when Californians voted overwhelmingly to pass Proposition 36, they sent an unmistakable message: It’s time to treat addiction like the public-health and public-safety crisis it is. Voters understood that the revolving door of untreated addiction and petty crime wasn’t compassion — it was failure.

Prop. 36 gave local courts new authority to require treatment for those caught repeatedly with dangerous drugs like fentanyl — a tool that simply didn’t exist before. For too long, those individuals cycled through misdemeanor courts, received short jail stays or probation and went right back to using and reoffending.

Prop. 36 finally made it possible to intervene before addiction turned deadly.

But one year after voters approved the proposition, critics claim that Prop. 36 has fallen short. A recent op-ed published in The Sacramento Bee by Anne Irwin, the founder and director of Smart Justice California, argued that the initiative “failed to deliver mass treatment” and instead “criminalized addiction.”

It’s true that the treatment expansion voters expected has not materialized. But the failure isn’t with Prop. 36, it’s with Sacramento’s refusal to fund it.

The promise of Prop. 36 cannot be fulfilled without resources. Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Legislature have yet to provide meaningful, dedicated funding to make court-ordered treatment a reality.

Instead of allocating $250 million for treatment programs — the number proposed by Orange County Democratic Sen. Thomas Umberg for serious Prop. 36 implementation — counties were told they could rely on existing resources to implement the initiative (such as opioid settlement funds, Prop. 1 bond dollars or Medi-Cal reimbursements). But these resources are restricted, temporary or already spoken for.

The result is predictable: local governments are struggling to stand up programs voters already approved.

Local efforts with limited support

In Placer County, we’ve begun to implement Prop. 36 with a model that connects eligible defendants directly to inpatient or outpatient treatment through the county’s Adult System of Care. The early results are promising: several participants have successfully transitioned through the residential treatment phase and have been placed in stable housing and continue to participate in the outpatient treatment phase. But the residential treatment phase is always at capacity.

Without stable state funding, we can’t expand beds or hire enough counselors to meet the need.

In El Dorado County, we’ve structured our Prop. 36 program to mirror the success of our former Drug Court — a proven model that reduced recidivism and saved taxpayer dollars before it lost funding after state realignment.

But we’re now confronting the same obstacle: a lack of treatment capacity. Every day, people ready to change their lives are turned away or forced onto waitlists because the state has failed to build the treatment infrastructure voters demanded.

Accountability and compassion

Opponents have tried to portray Prop. 36 as a return to “tough-on-crime” policies. That’s false. Prop. 36 replaced automatic incarceration with court-supervised treatment — and consequences for those who refuse to participate. Accountability and compassion are not opposites; they are complementary. The path to recovery often begins with accountability: a clear structure that requires treatment, sobriety testing and community-based support.

In our communities, we’ve seen what happens when that structure doesn’t exist. The same people cycle through the system dozens of times, committing low-level crimes to support addiction, overdosing in public bathrooms or dying alone. Calling that system “reform” is not compassion, it’s abandonment.

The Legislature can still get this right

It’s not too late to fulfill the will of the voters. Counties across California stand ready to implement the promise of Prop. 36. Probation departments, public defenders, treatment providers and district attorneys all agree: We need sustained, dedicated funding to make this work.

The governor and Legislature should act immediately to create a dedicated Prop. 36 treatment fund — similar to the way the state funded realignment or mental-health courts — so that every county can expand treatment capacity, build partnerships with providers and collect outcome data.

Prop. 36 was not about “mass incarceration.” It was about ending mass neglect — the decades-long failure to treat addiction before it destroys lives. Californians voted for a smarter, more humane system. The people kept their promise. Now, Sacramento must keep its own.

Morgan Gire is the district attorney of Placer County. Vern Pierson is the district attorney of El Dorado County.