San Francisco Proceeds Along Path to Destroy Freedom

[From article]
San Francisco, which is both a city and a county, is the second major county in California to pass the law, a move that came after contentious discussion. The law will allow judges to order outpatient treatment for people with a record of failed mental health hospitalizations and of violence.
Supporters see the measure as a way to help people who won't, or can’t, help themselves and to ensure they take medication. Critics have warned that enforcing the law will create a system ready-made for civil rights abuses and suggest that expanding community mental health services would be more appropriate.

See the below link for extensive discussion of U.S. law on forced drugging, which includes this delicious piece of wisdom

Corruption in the Courts
It turns out that psychiatrists, with the full understanding and tacit permission of the trial judges, regularly lie in court to obtain involuntary commitment and forced medication orders:
[C]ourts accept . . . testimonial dishonesty, . . . specifically where witnesses, especially expert witnesses, show a "high propensity to purposely distort their testimony in order to achieve desired ends." . . .
Experts frequently . . . and openly subvert statutory and case law criteria that impose rigorous behavioral standards as predicates for commitment . . .

This combination . . . helps define a system in which (1) dishonest testimony is often regularly (and unthinkingly) accepted; (2) statutory and case law standards are frequently subverted; and (3) insurmountable barriers are raised to insure that the allegedly "therapeutically correct" social end is met . . .. In short, the mental disability law system often deprives individuals of liberty disingenuously and upon bases that have no relationship to case law or to statutes.
The ADA and Persons with Mental Disabilities: Can Sanist Attitudes Be Undone? by Michael L. Perlin, Journal of Law and Health, 1993/1994, 8 JLHEALTH 15, 33-34.
The psychiatric profession explicitly acknowledges psychiatrists regularly lie to the courts in order to obtain forced treatment orders. E. Fuller Torrey, M.D., probably the most prominent proponent of involuntary psychiatric treatment says:
It would probably be difficult to find any American Psychiatrist working with the mentally ill who has not, at a minimum, exaggerated the dangerousness of a mentally ill person's behavior to obtain a judicial order for commitment.
Torrey, E. Fuller. 1997. Out of the Shadows: Confronting America's Mental Illness Crisis. New York: John Wiley and Sons. 152. Dr. Torrey goes on to say this lying to the courts is a good thing. Dr. Torrey also quotes Psychiatrist Paul Appelbaum as saying when "confronted with psychotic persons who might well benefit from treatment, and who would certainly suffer without it, mental health professionals and judges alike were reluctant to comply with the law," noting that in "'the dominance of the commonsense model,' the laws are sometimes simply disregarded."

http://psychrights.org/force_of_law.htm

See also
[From article]
This double standard needs to end. If we don’t require forced treatment for cancer patients who could be cured by chemotherapy, there’s little justification for keeping it around for mental illness.
[. . .]
if someone were dying from cancer or heart disease, they have an absolute right to refuse medical treatment for their ailment. So why is it that people with mental disorders can have that similar right taken away from them?
[. . .]
Forced treatment is wrong. Just as no doctor would ever force someone to undergo cancer treatment against their will, I can no longer back the rationalizations that justify forcing a fellow human being to undergo treatment for their mental health concern without their consent.
As a society, we’ve shown time and time again that we cannot devise a system that won’t be abused or used in ways that it was never intended. Judges simply don’t work as check for forced treatment, because they don’t have any reasonable basis on which to actually rest their judgment in the short time they’re given to make a determination.
The power to force treatment — whether through the old-style commitment laws or the new-style “assisted outpatient treatment” laws — cannot be trusted to others to wield compassionately or as an option of last resort.
Absent from the discussion about forced treatment and/or treatment without consent is the U.S. Constitution, and/or laws of the state. Taking freedom without Due Process violates the Constitution. American jurisprudence includes the notion of mens rea and actus reus, for a finding guilt of a crime. If a person is a suspect of a crime, police have the option of probable cause for arrest, and/or obtaining a warrant for surveillance. All too often psychiatrists believe they have superior knowledge and morality, that they do not need to obey laws that regulate their behavior. They believe they are above the law. One more problem is that lawyers, judges, psychiatrists, journalists believe that an accusation of mental illness is a finding of guilt of a criminal act. One more concern is how mental illnesses are created, i.e., by consensus. See, e.g., Boston University Psychologist Margaret Hagan's book, Whores of the Court.

http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2012/11/26/the-double-standard-of-forced-treatment/

The Double Standard of Forced Treatment
By JOHN M. GROHOL, PSY.D.
November 26, 2012

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/7/8/sf-supervisors-passlauraslaw.html

SF supervisors pass Laura's Law
The controversial measure will allow judges to compel mentally ill people to obtain treatment
July 8, 2014 10:47PM ET