California is in a budget crisis. According to reports, 20,000 government employees are to be laid off. State tax refunds paid with IOU's. 42 billion in budget shortfalls. No word yet on how many prison guards will be laid off, or how many probation officers, but my guess is that there won't be any let go. Or any prisons shut down just yet.

You know what they say about addicts? That they have to hit rock bottom before they can get treatment. Evidently, what is allegedly true for drug addicts is actually true for drug war addicts. I'd call that projection by the drug warriors.

And California is most definitely addicted to the drug war - locking up tens of thousands of addicts, drug users, and nonviolent drug dealers a year, at a cost of billions of dollars. That's billions in prison expenditures that have not decreased drug use, billions in law enforcement and prosecution expenditures that have not decreased drug use, and billions in lost tax revenues between keeping California's #1 crop, cannabis, illegal, and taking able-bodied people, primarily minority males, from the workforce.

I hate to say the Drug Policy Alliance told you so, but as a staff member of DPA, we made plenty of information available about Prop 5. So, California: we told you so. Prop 5 wouldn't have prevented most of this - but even at face value, at least some of the 20,000 people to be laid off in the next couple of weeks would have kept their jobs instead, California could have kept its public works, and a good many people would be staring at their overpaid tax money returned to them, instead of an IOU from Arnold.