An Aug. 17 article in the Mercury News detailing the early results of California’s Proposition 36, overwhelmingly approved in 2024 with promises of treatment for drug addiction and more accountability for crimes like burglary, showed thus far in the Bay Area, the measure has compelled only a few dozen people into addiction or mental health programs. According to the Mercury, backers place much of the blame for Proposition 36’s slow start on Gov. Gavin Newsom and state lawmakers, who have refused to put enough funding into treatment, courts, and law enforcement to support the measure’s implementation. “It’s kind of sad and disappointing that the governor and legislature opted not to provide the funding necessary to do what the voters want to see done,” Jonathan Raven, assistant chief executive with the California District Attorneys Association, told the newspaper.
While Proposition 36 empowers local prosecutors to bring felony charges against repeat drug and theft offenders, drug defendants can complete a treatment program to have their charges dismissed. In the six months since Proposition 36 took effect, Bay Area prosecutors filed roughly 600 felony drug possession cases, according to a county-by-county review of charging data obtained by the Mercury, and as of July, only 60 people had “agreed” to treatment under the law across the entire nine-county region.
While Santa Clara County accounted for almost half of the new drug possession felonies filed in the Bay Area, the district attorneys’ offices in Alameda and San Francisco counties brought only a handful of cases, prompting reporter Ethan Varian to point out “the discretion prosecutors have in charging decisions.”
Of course, San Francisco’s notoriously lenient judges get some of the blame, letting defendants plead to lesser charges, doling out short jail sentences, and allowing drug users to opt for probation rather than wait “sometimes weeks in custody” for a treatment bed…