O.C. Confronts Drug War and Turns Left

How did it happen? Was there a moment when a light went on?

When did Orange County voters, long considered among California’s most conservative, take a sharp left turn and sign on to the movement away from imprisoning drug offenders?

Sorry, I can’t give you a date, but the county’s residents are definitely there.

Conservatism, thy name is drug treatment.

On election day last week, every city in Orange County gave a majority of its votes to Proposition 36, the measure that will divert nonviolent drug offenders to treatment programs rather than send them to jail or prison. The heaviest support came from Laguna Beach (72.6%), but even Yorba Linda at the other end of the spectrum supported it 55% to 45%. In Laguna Woods, the county’s senior citizen enclave, two of every three voters supported it--trailing only Laguna Beach in support.

Countywide, 60.7% of the voters favored the measure. That reflected almost identically the statewide tally.

How did the public get so far ahead of its elected officials? It’s not as though Orange County politicians--state or national--have beat the drum for a more benevolent drug policy.

Instead, the case has been made over the years by a small group of advocates who apparently have been winning recruits even as people in politics and law enforcement dismissed them.

“You might disagree with me, but my feeling is that the public is way ahead of elected officials,” says Katherine Smith, one of the county’s earliest drug-treatment soldiers and now an elected official herself. “Elected officials do the party line and what they think is safe.”

Smith was most visible in the early 1990s, discussing drug policy in her run for Congress in 1992 and then working with Superior Court Judge James Gray, the county’s most outspoken and visible proponent of changing the nation’s drug policies.

In recent years, Smith’s visibility on the issue decreased as she devoted more time to serving as a member of the Anaheim Union High School District board.

Truly Grass-Roots

Does she feel vindicated? “Yes, I certainly do,” she says. “And I don’t think this should be a Republican or Democratic issue, because I’m a fourth-generation Republican and consider myself an economic conservative, and a patriot too.”

If anyone should feel vindicated by the local and statewide vote on Proposition 36, it’s Gray, now the supervising judge in the county’s Probate Department.

He says the public shift toward drug treatment is “the ultimate grass-roots movement.”

He’s right, because other than current Sheriff Mike Carona, I can’t think of any major local politician who’s spoken in favor of treatment over incarceration for some drug offenders.

Gray says the movement has evolved as people informed themselves about the issue and gathered more first- or secondhand experience. “People know prison [for drug offenders] doesn’t work, and they’re tired of paying for it,” Gray says. “And a lot of them know people in their family or friends or friends of friends who have this disease and are taken away from their families and put in prison with no good results.”

My next question: Will elected officials come out of the closet on drug policy?

“As soon as elected officials realize votes are in it, they’ll be in the vanguard,” Gray says. “The public is willing to acknowledge that our present policy, namely the war on drugs, hasn’t worked. But politicians fear being labeled soft on crime.”

He thinks the time is drawing near when it will be safe for nervous politicians to speak openly about it. He likens the scenario to the speed with which the initial crumbling of communism built to a crescendo.

“I think we’re in the crumbling phase now,” says Gray, who’s written a soon-to-be-published book whose short title is, ‘Why Our Drug Laws Have Failed and What We Can Do About It.”

For Judge Gray, the shift in drug policy can’t come quickly enough. “I’m so anxious to get it changed, because people like me are required to oversee this failed policy, and it hurts to do it.”

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by calling (714) 966-7821 or by e-mail to dana.parsons@latimes.com.