Carona’s Plea: Just Say Yes (to Treatment)

It seems so nonthreatening at the time. Here, have a joint. Here, have a beer. Here, let’s do some speed.

For lots of teens, that first exposure to drugs or alcohol turns out to be no big deal. They simply decide they don’t like the stuff and never touch it again. Lots of others extend their usage for months or years and then give it up.

And then there’s the group that doesn’t want to quit. Or can’t. Before they know it, and without having planned it, they’re hooked.

They’re the ones that Orange County Sheriff Mike Carona sees all too often. They’re the ones who end up in Orange County jails, the most overcrowded in the country at 145% capacity.

Many law enforcement officials merely shrug at the drug addicts and show them to their cells. Carona, elected as a political conservative in a conservative county, has gone the other way.

In a newly published book written with Santa Ana author Maralys Wills, Carona puts in print what he has occasionally talked about during his first term as sheriff: that how we typically deal with drug-addicted criminals must change.

Because of the county’s conservatism and its sheer size (sixth-largest jail population in America with 5,400 inmates), Carona’s contrarian public stance may well propel him into the forefront of the national movement to redefine drug policy and law enforcement’s role in it.

If so, Carona, now only halfway through his first term in office, has already created his legacy.

The book, “Save My Son,” is both a scholarly treatise and a personal revelation.

One of Wills’ four adult children has spent several years behind bars--all because of a drug habit that started with getting his first joint from the boy next door.

‘Mom’s Dead’

Carona’s professional interest has its roots in being the son of an alcoholic mother--a mother he discovered dead in her bed when he was 11 years old.

It was July of 1966, he writes, a morning just like any other. Got up, took a shot at making up his bed, brushed his teeth, washed his face. He remembers smelling coffee brewing but no eggs or toast. That meant his mother must still be asleep. He stopped by her room.

“Sometime during the early morning hours . . . after yet another day of a fifth of scotch and six-pack of beer, my mother had died in her sleep,” Carona writes. “No son should ever have to find his mother this way.”

Deep down, he’d prepared himself, having seen his mother in drunken stupors far too many times. “I left her room and walked down the hall to the kitchen, walked over to my dad, who was sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee and a cigarette,” he writes. “I said almost coldly, ‘Mom’s dead.’ ”

Whatever coldness the boy felt that day obviously has dissolved into the pages of Carona and Wills’ book.

They contend that prisons and jails are stocked with drug offenders who would be better served in treatment programs. They cite numerous programs that have worked in other places and recite the sorry statistics of recidivism that currently haunt the prison system when rehabilitation or treatment programs aren’t available.

In Orange County, Carona has backed his philosophy with a pilot, 64-bed program in which inmates who would otherwise be jailed sign up for drug treatment. He says 20% of the county’s inmates are in custody solely for drug use or possession; between 60% and 80% behind bars are drug-dependent.

Pragmatic Approach

He and Wills make the all-too-sane argument that society benefits when people with drug problems are helped, so as to minimize the chances of them returning to their criminal ways once their terms are over.

“As a politically conservative sheriff, I believe strongly that criminals should be off our streets and in jail,” he writes. “I oppose the wholesale legalization of drugs. But I am also a pragmatist who believes in identifying a problem and then looking for a solution.”

Over the years when writing about drug policy, I’ve acknowledged my own ambivalence. All I’ve pined for was rational debate and credible public figures with the guts to debate it honestly.

Even Carona and Wills acknowledge the touchiness of the subject. They cite a recent Orange County election in which 16 people ran for a judgeship. Ten were for three strikes and the death penalty, they write, but only two mentioned rehabilitative “drug courts” in a favorable way.

“The problem, of course,” they write, “is that the voting public has not yet caught on to the idea that supporting rehabilitation for addicts is in everyone’s best interests.”

That’s the kind of guts I’m talking about.

With this book, Sheriff Carona has helped ensure that no one in Orange County need fear talking about it again.

*

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Readers may reach Parsons by calling (714) 966-7821 or by writing to him at the Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or by e-mail to dana.parsons@latimes.com.