For Our Health & Safety: Joining Forces To Defeat Addiction

In this report, the Little Hoover Commission recommends how California state and community leaders could employ sound science to better respond to one of the most costly and harmful problems facing the state -- alcohol and drug addiction. It concludes that existing resources could be far better used if prevention, treatment and enforcement efforts were better coordinated, especially if high quality treatment programs were available for those who could most benefit and those imposing the greatest burdens on other public programs.

The Commission also concludes that the initial implementation of Proposition 36 -- the voter approved initiative that diverts drug offenders from jails to treatment -- is showing some signs of success. But California needs to take the next step: aligning all drug and alcohol-related efforts to a strategy based on which programs work the best to reduce the human and fiscal costs of addiction. The Commission recommended that a council of community and state leaders be given the task of developing a strategy and coordinating the dozens of state and local programs attempting to control alcohol and other drugs.

http://www.lhc.ca.gov/lhcdir/report169.html

Publication Year: 2003

Publisher

Little Hoover Commission
925 L Street, Suite 805
Sacramento, ca 95814
Phone: 916-445-2125
Website: http://www.lhc.ca.gov/lhc.html
Email: littlehoover@lhc.ca.gov