SAN DIEGO -- Participants in a drug treatment program called drug court on Tuesday completed their program, which has saved taxpayers millions of dollars and helped thousands of drug abusers get clean in San Diego.

"It would be a lot easier for a lot of folks to just do their time, count the days and be done and go back to their life,” said Susan Bower with the county’s Alcohol and Drug Services.

Participants in the 18-month program must take three drug tests and attend one self-help meeting per week. They are also under a curfew at 10 p.m. and required to have a full-time job.

The program kept participants out of prison and saved tax payers $34,000 per participant.

Nearly every county in the state has adopted this program. One participant in the program said it changed his life.

"I couldn't control myself,” he said. “My life was unmanageable."

In California, more than 63 percent of controlled substance users and more than 53 percent of marijuana users reoffend within two years of getting out of prison.

In the drug court program, only 17 percent of graduates ever touch an illegal drug again.

Proposition 36 changed the way courts deal with non-violent drug offenders. It gave them three chances to get clean but some said it didn’t give them enough help.

"This program should have been made bigger and bigger and bigger. The voters were sold something differently and we got Prop 36 which drained a lot of money from this program," said Central Division Judge Peter Gallagher.

Despite the money the drug court saves taxpayers and the help it gives to addicts, by tomorrow the program will be a backup program throughout the state, with the primary punishment still being prison.