Martin Sheen Joins Foes of Drug Measure

Actor Martin Sheen, whose son Charlie nearly died of a drug overdose, declared his opposition Monday to a November ballot measure that would send as many as 37,000 Californians a year into drug treatment programs rather than to jail.

“I’ve seen how devastating drug addiction can be,” Sheen said Monday in a written statement announcing his role as honorary chairman of the campaign against the initiative. “Drug addicts need to be held directly accountable by the court with real sanctions.”

The people who helped write Proposition 36 dispute Sheen’s claims, saying that the measure includes plenty of tough penalties for people who flounder in or flout drug treatment. Those include sentences of one to three years in prison or county jail for possibly the first and second and definitely the third violation of probation. Such violations could include missing classes, testing positive for drugs or getting arrested for drug possession again.

“They’re trying to confuse the issue of whether there are consequences,” said Dave Fratello, spokesman for the California Campaign for New Drug Policies, backers of Proposition 36. “There are, and they’re very severe.”

Proposition 36 promises to inspire vigorous debate in coming months about whether California’s best approach to drug abuse is “lock ‘em up” or “lead ‘em straight.”

If voters pass the measure, people convicted of drug possession or being under the influence of drugs would be sentenced by a judge to attend a year or more of drug treatment rather than go to jail or prison. People convicted at the same time of other crimes, or of making or selling drugs, would not be eligible for the treatment option.

Backed by drug treatment centers, assorted Democratic politicians and several associations of nurses and mental health workers, the ballot measure is opposed by the state prison guard union, various Republican lawmakers and dozens of sheriffs and police chiefs. Three wealthy opponents of the nation’s drug policies have so far funded the Proposition 36 campaign, including the $1 million it cost to qualify it for the ballot. They are New York financier George Soros, Cleveland insurance magnate Peter Lewis and University of Phoenix founder John Sperling.

Stockton developer and San Diego Chargers owner Alex Spanos recently donated $100,000 to fight the ballot measure, said Jean Munoz, spokeswoman for Californians United Against Drug Abuse, the group leading that fight.

Both sides said they expect to reach voters through grass-roots organizing and newspaper opinion pages, not heavy television advertising.

Sheen, who portrays the president on the NBC television series “The West Wing,” argues that the ballot measure would decriminalize “dangerous and highly addictive drugs like heroin, crack cocaine, PCP and methamphetamine.”

Charlie Sheen was hospitalized for a drug overdose in May 1998. He was ordered into a rehabilitation program after his father reported the overdose to the judge. “He saved my life, and I love him for that,” the son reportedly said upon release from drug treatment.

The nonpartisan state legislative analyst’s office says Proposition 36 would significantly slow expansion of the prison system by diverting as many as 37,000 nonviolent drug possession offenders each year to treatment and community service. Within several years, the measure could eliminate the need for at least 10,000 state prison beds and 2,800 county jail beds.

Passage of the measure could save the state up to $250 million a year in prison operating costs and delay the construction of a new prison at savings of about $475 million, according to a May review by the office.

The initiative could in some cases keep from incarceration people who otherwise would find themselves serving lengthy prison sentences under California’s three-strikes law. To qualify for treatment rather than prison under Proposition 36, a three-strikes candidate would have had to be out of prison or jail for at least five years.