The report assumes that the 551 persons sentenced under the terms of Proposition 200 would otherwise have gone to prison for an average of six months. Mary Judge Ryan, the chief deputy Pima County attorney, said most people convicted of first-time drug offenses would have been back on the streets. Arizona finances drug treatment, in part, through a luxury tax on alcohol, a provision of the 1996 initiative. Drug offenders are also expected to help pay for their treatment. Similar programs that call for treatment rather than incarceration are being used throughout the United States.
Drug courts offer offenders treatment as an alternative to trial and a criminal record.
Gen. Barry McCaffrey, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, said he wants to reduce the nation's 1.8 million prison population by 250,000 by promoting options for drug treatment. In requiring that drug offenders be treated before being freed of supervision, they have made themselves safer. This, in turn, produces additional savings and security. Fact is, drug abuse and drug-related crime are a bipartisan epidemic. The United States has been losing the war on drugs because its strategy has been hopelessly one-sided.