BOB ABERNETHY: As with poverty, so with drugs. There's a continuing national debate over what to do. What's the right balance between treatment and punishment for drug addicts? In California, there's a proposition on next month's ballot that would replace prison with treatment for many drug offenders, and it's backed by many clergymen and women. Ruben Martinez has our story in Los Angeles.

RUBEN MARTINEZ: In November, Californians will vote on Proposition 36, a ballot initiative which would divert first- and second-time drug offenders into treatment programs instead of giving them jail time. Today nearly one-half of all women and almost one-third of all men in the California penal system are serving time for drug-related matters.

Three decades into America's war on drugs, some members of the religious community want to revisit the debate over addiction and how best to deal with it.

Reverend SCOTT RICHARDSON (All Saints Church): There are a lot of people who still believe that addiction has essentially to do with weakness or bad morals or some kind of poor sense of discipline in a person's life. That doesn't really explain fully -- it doesn't even get close to explaining what addiction is about.

Reverend HOWARD MOODY (Religious Leaders for a More Just & Compassionate Drug Policy): The federal laws are very harsh, and so we're trying to help people understand what that does to send people away for that length of time and to work at the whole question of humanizing -- of the humanizing of the drug addict.

MARTINEZ: The statistics are numbing. Ever-increasing numbers of young men and women, mostly black and Hispanic, are streaming to the jails and prisons on non-violent drug offenses. By and large, religious leaders have supported the war on drugs. Indeed, some of them have even provided its moral underpinnings. But a new coalition of clergy is calling into question this approach to addiction, pushing for treatment instead of incarceration and for compassion instead of punishment.

Baptist Minister Howard Moody is the founder of Religious Leaders for a More Just & Compassionate Drug Policy, a small but influential coalition of clergy and theologians.

Rev. MOODY: I haven't felt and still do not think that we can change the drugs laws in this country without the people in the churches and synagogues and all being in favor of it and helping to change that. I really don't.

Mrs. MARY MORENO RICHARDSON(Episcopalian Chaplain, Los Angeles County Juvenile Hall): ...and God is with you.

MARTINEZ: Among clergy in favor of reforming drug policy is Mary Richardson, an Episcopalian chaplain at a Los Angeles County juvenile detention center. Richardson, herself a recovering alcoholic, counsels and offers support to teens, many of whom who have drug or alcoholic tendencies or come from families who do.

Mrs. RICHARDSON: Anybody here ever grow up in an alcoholic home? I did. I did. And sometimes that's not a real happy place to be. We may come into contact with people in our lives, whether it be relatives or friends or boyfriends or partners or whoever, who do have drug and alcohol problems. And how do we protect our families and our children from doing that?

I want them to see the potential that is within them, and within all of us, and awaken that spark inside of them so that they get in touch with their own spiritual sight and the power that they can get from knowing that they are made in the image of God, and so that they can continue and become instruments of peace in our community.