A state that removes consequences cannot be surprised when the crisis gets worse

By Dean Maddox, Public Safety & Crime Reporter

August is Drug Overdose Awareness Month. California will spend the month remembering people who died from drugs and urging the public to seek help.

But the state’s overdose crisis is not just a tragedy. It is the predictable result of a system that has steadily reduced the consequences of drug use, drug possession and repeat criminal behavior.

Sacramento’s supermajority party wants us to believe enforcement doesn’t work while it dismantles the laws that hold dealers accountable and requires addicts to get help. “Harm reduction,” through programs that look the other way or outright enable drug abuse, is the solution, they tell us. If that were true, why does Singapore, which aggressively prosecutes dealers and directs addicts into treatment, have a drug-related death rate less than one-twentieth of California’s?

California reduced simple drug possession from a felony to a misdemeanor through Proposition 47. It expanded diversion and release programs. It shifted offenders into county systems with limited jail space. It created treatment requirements that often lacked the enforcement necessary to make them meaningful.

The practical message became keep using and keep offending and there will be no real consequences.

California’s original Proposition 36 showed the problem clearly. Nonviolent drug offenders could receive treatment instead of jail. That could have been a reasonable alternative for someone willing to get sober.

But if an offender refused treatment or failed to complete it, the system often struggled to impose a serious consequence. UCLA found that nearly two-thirds of people who failed to complete treatment were later rearrested.

The consequences reach far beyond the person using drugs.

The Placer County Sheriff’s Office recently secured its fifth fentanyl-related murder conviction. The defendant knew fentanyl could kill. He had witnessed overdose deaths and continued selling it anyway. Two children were left without their father.

California has spent years coddling criminals and refusing to meaningfully enforce the law. Families who lose children, businesses forced to endure public disorder and police officers responding to the same people again and again are left carrying the cost.

This August, Californians should remember the dead. But they should also ask what kind of government keeps removing consequences and then expresses surprise when more people die.

Treatment should be available, it should be mandatory for eligible offenders, and it should be backed by jail when they refuse. Dealers should be prosecuted aggressively. A state that refuses to enforce its laws is not solving the overdose crisis. It is helping sustain it.