Matt Mahan

He and I disagreed over Prop 36, over recovery housing.

There've been other policy disagreements we've had.

Prop 36 was a ballot measure that passed overwhelmingly a couple of years ago.

In fact, it was about a 70 to 30 vote ratio in support.

It passed in every county in California.

And it essentially brought some accountability back to our drug courts.

It did a couple of things.

One, it enhanced the punishments around retail theft, organized retail theft, which is important.

But the other component that I was most interested in

was how we actually bring balance back to the criminal justice system when it comes to drug use.

We went from a period of over-incarceration where our jails and prisons became the place where addicts and folks dealing with mental illness were being housed, not rehabilitating them and at great expense to taxpayers.

Obviously, that system was broken, but we over-corrected and ended up with our streets and our emergency rooms

being just kind of this revolving door and not really helping people either.

And so what 36 does is it allows a DA to bring charges and a judge to ultimately sentence someone with what's called a treatment mandated felony, which simply says, if you're on your third serious drug offense, like you're using meth in the park and the kids can no longer use the playground, you can be given a choice between treatment and incarceration.

So it brings a consequence back

acknowledging the immense societal impacts of things like public drug use that then often lead to trespassing, vandalism, retail theft, and all of these other impacts.

And look, the state has refused to fund it.

It's one of the first things I would do as governor is make sure that we properly fund Prop 36 and get people into treatment.

I think that's why, you know, again, I'm hesitant to speak for Governor Newsom or any other elected.

They can speak for themselves.