California Might Get Tougher on Drugs
A state agency might decide to use federal money for increased drug law enforcement, despite California's desperate fiscal need for smaller prison population.
Two weeks after federal judges ordered California to reduce its prison population, an arm of the Schwarzenegger administration is set to vote on increased funding to police anti-drug units, potentially putting even more offenders behind bars. An advisory board for the California Emergency Management Agency is expected to decide today whether to channel $33 million in federal money to narcotics task forces around the state that have proved particularly adept at apprehending drug criminals....The bulk of the money is slated to help multi-jurisdictional task forces in all 58 California counties that investigate and apprehend narcotics offenders. Money also would go to marijuana-suppression efforts around the state and the California Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement, which coordinates with federal agents on border drug trafficking..... As now envisioned, the state's anti-drug-abuse enforcement program could have its funding boosted substantially over last year, in part because of nearly $20 million in federal stimulus money allocated in July.
And this is being planned in a time when the state decidedly needs fewer people in prison, not more, especially not more nonviolent offenders:
This month, a three-judge panel ordered the state to shrink its prison population by more than 40,000 in the next two years. Last month, legislators approved a $1.2-billion reduction in prison spending.
For more data and opinion on the matter of drug enforcement and California prisons, see this state statistical report on our prison population; according to it 28 percent of new felon admissions to our system in 2008 were drug crimes. See also the Drug Policy Alliance, a drug law reform group, page devoted to California. And here's the California Narcotics Officers Association site.
As drug dealers are being blamed for current Santa Barbara wildfires, it helps to remember that like most problems with drugs that aren't the personal problems of the drug users, it is prohibition itself that drives drug producers and sellers to expedients like growing secretly in national forests.
The image associated with this post was taken by Flickr user caffeina. It was used under user Creative Commons license.
