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A California law that allows qualified drug offenders to enter substance use treatment rather than go to jail or prison saved the state close to $100 million in its first year, NIDA-supported researchers report. The researchers estimated that California spent an average of $2,300 less on each of 42,000 offenders who were adjudicated under its Substance Abuse and Crime Prevention Act of 2000 than it would have spent without the Act. The savings mainly reflected reduced spending on incarceration, which outweighed the cost of extending treatment to more offenders. http://www.drugabuse.gov/news-events/nida-notes/2014/02/california-reaped-large-savings-by-diverting-drug-using-offenders-treatment