The Legislature finds and declares all of the following:
(a) Federal, state, and local governments have the responsibility and the expressed intent to provide and ensure the accessibility of alcohol and other drug treatment, recovery, intervention, and prevention services to all individuals, with specific emphasis on women, ethnic minorities, and other disenfranchised segments of the population.
(b) The effects of inappropriate alcohol use by ethnic populations in California are increasing. Concurrently, the use of available recovery services by these populations is not in keeping with the increase of problems experienced by these populations.
(c) There is a great shortage of treatment programs available to pregnant women and their offspring. Blacks have an infant mortality rate twice that of the general population, and substance abuse only exacerbates the problem.
(d) Barriers to accessing the services available specifically include, but are not limited to, the following:
(1) Lack of educational materials appropriate to the community.
(2) Geographic isolation or remoteness.
(3) Institutional and cultural barriers.
(4) Language differences.
(5) Lack of representation by affected groups employed by public and private service providers and policymakers.
(6) Insufficient research information regarding problems and appropriate strategies to resolve the problems of access to services.
(e) While current law requires the department to develop and implement a statewide plan to alleviate problems related to inappropriate alcohol use and other drug use and to overcome the barriers to their solution, these attempts have been ineffective due to the magnitude of the task.
(Amended by Stats. 2004, Ch. 862, Sec. 56. Effective January 1, 2005.)