Common Sense for a Common Problem

Prohibition of alcohol did not work in the '20s and prohibiton isn't working now.

Hightower Download: The Government's Sick War on Marijuana


Levin: Prisons don't hold solution to drug problems

California found a better way. In 2000, that state's voters passed Proposition 36 to sentence nonviolent drug addicts to community-based treatment instead of prison. The result, according to a UCLA study, has been $1.4 billion in savings to taxpayers and 60,000 former addicts successfully completing treatment.

On Tuesday, the Senate Criminal Justice Committee heard Senate Bill 1909 by Sens. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston, John Carona, R-Dallas, and Robert Deuell, R-Greenville, which would model the California approach. Provisions in the appropriations bill would create thousands of residential and outpatient community-based drug treatment slots.

Marc A. Levin is director of the Center for Effective Justice at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a nonprofit research institute based in Austin.

(Thanks, BellaGirl.)

Thanks for reading the crap i typed.