With Proposition 36 holding a strong lead in early returns and Los Angeles County on the verge of electing a new District Attorney, Long Beach’s local prosecutor says he sees a chance to push more people into mental health and drug treatment under the threat of tougher criminal penalties.
Long Beach City Prosecutor Doug Haubert said he’ll now have more leverage to compel the repeat drug and theft offenders that Proposition 36 targets into diversion programs. It’s a process he’ll likely have to work out in coordination with a new District Attorney, Nathan Hochman, who was ahead of incumbent George Gascón in early returns Tuesday night.
“Now that Prop. 36 has passed, I think the real work needs to begin,” said Haubert, who hopes to have a strategy worked out over the next 60 days.
This year’s ballot initiative came as a response to Proposition 47, a 2014 ballot measure that reclassified possession of heroin, methamphetamine and other illegal drugs as misdemeanors in the state. The decade-old proposition also raised the threshold to prosecute felony theft from $400 in stolen merchandise to $950.