Addicts seeking treatment in California are having an easier time getting it thanks to Proposition 36, which offers drug treatment to nonviolent drug offenders. In the last two years, more than 65,000 people have entered treatment; many of them would have otherwise gone to jail . A study describing how effective the program has been is due by year's end. But a report released just this week by a research group at U.C.L.A. provides reasons for cautious optimism. For example, roughly one in three people who entered the program completed it - which is par for the course. And about half the people being treated were participating in a treatment program for the first time, even though many had been addicted for a decade or even longer.

What to do with the meth users?

Outpatient programs are available, but there appears to be a shortage of residential programs, which are crucial for methamphetamine addicts. They make up the largest bloc of addicts and often need months to recover. Residential programs also help addicts of all kinds who live on the streets or in drug-saturated households where outpatient rehabilitation would be difficult. Criminal justice officials need to shed their biases against methadone maintenance for this program to succeed with heroin addicts, who are the most difficult to treat.

What Proposition 36-type measures can accomplish:

California is already learning that there are many more nonviolent drug addicts in need of treatment, clogging the jails and courts, than many of us thought. If the new regime rehabilitates even a third of those people, prison costs and blood-borne infections like AIDS should decline noticeably.