Sometimes ‘Coercion’ Is a Virtue

An old-school liberal, state Senate President Pro Tem John Burton (D-San Francisco) revels in his reputation as a champion of civil rights and democracy. That crown was touched by a bit of tarnish last week when he used a legislative trick to prevent senators from considering a sensible bill that had passed overwhelmingly in the Assembly in May.

The bill, AB 1800, by Assemblywoman Helen Thomson (D-Davis), would revise a well-intentioned 1968 law, the Lanterman-Petris-Short Act, that prohibits doctors from treating seriously mentally ill people against their wishes unless it can be proven that they are in imminent danger of harming themselves or others.

Burton says that Thomson’s bill would invite coercion by easing restrictions on compelled treatment. That argument had some validity in the ‘60s, when some psychiatric hospitals overused debilitating antipsychotic drugs like Thorazine to subdue patients. Today, however, those drugs have been replaced by effective medications with few adverse side effects that greatly enhance patients’ ability to make rational decisions.

The Lanterman-Petris-Short Act impedes getting these medications to the people who need them most: those too sick to recognize their need for care. Thomson’s bill could help solve a growing crisis in which the mentally ill cycle in and out of jails and prisons, often as a result of petty crimes. Across California, about 50,000 people with untreated mental illness go homeless, 16% of state inmates are severely mentally ill and police spend more time dealing with mental health crises than with holdups.

Burton may see Thomson’s bill as “coercive,” but that word is more applicable to Burton’s decision to deny fellow senators a chance to consider a rightly popular bill.

To Take Action: Sen. John Burton, (916) 445-1412. Burton does not have a public e-mail address.