Choice of drug czar indicates treatment, not jail

Treatment for those, instead of incarceration
The White House said yesterday that it will push for treatment, rather than incarceration, of people arrested for drug-related crimes as it announced the nomination of Seattle Police Chief R. Gil Kerlikowske to oversee the nation's effort to control illegal drugs. Vice President, Biden, who helped shape the Office of National Drug Control Policy as a U.S. senator in the 1980s, said the Obama administration would continue to focus on the southwest border, where Mexican authorities are facing thousands of drug-related slayings and unchecked violence from drug cartels moving cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine into American markets. But it remained unclear how the new administration would engineer its budget to tackle the problem. Obama and Biden promised to offer first-time, nonviolent offenders a chance to serve their sentences in a drug rehabilitation center rather than in federal prison. In promoting wider use of drug courts, the administration is embracing an idea that has broad support in theory but has never been a main path for people with drug addictions who are charged with crimes.
I think this will be great, people who have got in trouble with drugs but have no previous convictions should be allowed to have treatment instead of prison. Some people get into things they really aren't into, but are followers of others. They do things and don't think about it, they think about impressing others, rather then doing what they know is right. I have had my share of run ins with the law, but I have gotten what I deserved, nothing more, nothing less. Now that people with drug problems and no priors will get help for their problem, instead of just slamming them in jail right away.