POLITICIANS' STANCE ON DRUG WAR SOFTENING

ALBANY, N.Y. -- Three recent events hint at a change in public attitudes
toward the war on drugs.

Wednesday, Gov. George Pataki proposed softening the harsh Rockefeller-era
drug laws in New York state. Gov. Christie Whitman of New Jersey apologized
for her state police, who had been stopping black and Latino motorists as
part of a drug-enforcement effort the public once applauded. And former
President Clinton has not only urged a re-examination of federal drug
sentencing, but also proposed equalizing penalties for possession of
powdered and crack cocaine, saying the stiffer penalties for crack
discriminated against members of ethnic minorities.

If politicians are societal weather vanes, then the war on drugs seems to
be losing some of its appeal.

For decades, experts on drug addiction have argued that long prison terms
for non-violent drug offenders, many of whom are addicts as well, are less
effective than drug-treatment programs at reducing crime. They also say
imprisonment is more expensive than treatment. The country's prison
population has grown to 2 million, and a quarter of the inmates are serving
time for drug offenses.

Until recently, though, these arguments have failed to move many Americans
or their public officials. But now the cause is being joined by Republican
governors and a former president who greatly expanded federal financing for
drug interdiction and local law enforcement, and gave $1 billion in aid to
the Colombian military to wipe out cocaine trafficking.

Why are critics of the drug war making headway now? The answer,
criminologists and other experts say, may lie in the public's waning fear
of crime.

Fear begets intolerance. People and the politicians they elect are more
willing to put up with severe penalties for relatively minor drug offenses
when crime rates are high. Such was the environment in New York City in the
late 1960s and early 1970s, a period that produced the Rockefeller laws. At
the time, heavy heroin use in the city was widely blamed for a rapidly
rising, property crime rate.

The city saw another, even more murderous, crime wave in the late 1980s and
early 1990s when crack cocaine became popular. City officials responded
with a huge expansion of the police force and an aggressive campaign
against street dealers and people carrying concealed guns.

Now, though, crime has declined steadily for several years, and violent
crimes in New York City have reached their lowest levels since 1967.

"There is a pretty clear correlation between the crime rate and criticism
of law enforcement officials for being too tough," said Lawrence Sherman,
the director of the Jerry Lee Center of Criminology at the University of
Pennsylvania. "As crime rates drop, you see more people complaining about
the cops."

Legions of people whose children are serving lengthy sentences under the
Rockefeller laws have begun making their presence felt in Albany. Many are
black and Latino, and many maintain that the laws, as enforced,
discriminate against their ethnic groups. More than 21,000 people are
serving time for drug convictions in New York state, about 95 percent of
whom are black or Latino, and about 70 percent were convicted of
non-violent crimes.

"Where is the sanity?" asks Mary Mortimer of New York City, who has two
sons serving prison time -- one 15 to 30 years, the other 10 to 20 -- for
possessing with the intent to sell less than a gram of cocaine. "I'd like
to be able to spend some time with my sons on this earth before I leave here."

These days, Pataki can afford any political consequences of listening to
Mortimer and people like her. After six years in office, his reputation as
a tough-on-crime governor is well-established.

The governor may be reacting to the political winds from other parts of the
country as well. In November, California voters passed a proposition
requiring the state to direct most people convicted of non-violent drug
possession into treatment programs rather than sending them to prison.
Arizona passed a similar law, and the governor of New Mexico has said he
plans to introduce similar changes this year.

Even some New York legislators who voted for the Rockefeller laws in 1973
now advocate their repeal. John R. Dunne, a former state senator from Long
Island, has formed a coalition with other former lawmakers to lobby the
governor.

In the early '70s, besides the heroin epidemic, Gov. Nelson Rockefeller was
faced with a youthful counterculture, particularly in New York City. But
many New Yorkers were not part of that movement and were far more concerned
about the heroin.

The governor, a liberal Republican, first tried to persuade the Legislature
to create the Narcotics Addiction Control Commission and establish secure
residential treatment centers around the state. He also started methadone
clinics for addicts. Those efforts proved costly and failed to reduce
crime. So in 1973, a frustrated Rockefeller proposed the
lock-them-up-and-throw-away-the-key approach.

At the time, the state had 12,000 inmates. Today it has 70,000. The laws
actually put New York out of step with the times. In 1970, Congress had
liberalized the harsh drug laws passed in the mid-1950s, eliminating many
mandatory sentences for drug offenses and repealing the death penalty for
heroin dealers who sold to minors.

It was not until 1986, after the cocaine craze in the early 1980s had begun
to show its effects, that Congress passed tough drug laws with mandatory
sentences and the death penalty for "drug kingpins." The Rockefeller laws
once again meshed with the tenor of the times.

Judging by Pataki's latest proposal, however, the pendulum has begun to
swing back the other way, in no small part, criminologists say, because
violent crime is down 40 percent in New York since he took office. Still,
what the governor has proposed falls far short of repealing the Rockefeller
laws, a step that some critics have urged.

The laws' critics want judges to have discretion in sentencing for all
narcotics cases. They also complain that Pataki has not called for changing
the biggest problem with the laws, which is that they impose mandatory
sentences based on the weight of the drugs rather than on the role of the
person arrested. So a low-level "mule," addicted himself, who is hired to
cart some cocaine across town can end up serving 15 years.

Pataki has proposed reducing the mandatory sentences for the top class of
drug offenses -- people caught with more than four ounces of cocaine or
heroine in their possession or caught trying to sell two ounces -- to 10
years, from 15. Judges would have discretion to send people to treatment
only in the case of low- and mid-level drug offenses.

One danger is that the district attorneys, most of whom oppose weakening
the law, will stop charging people with the lesser offenses. "The key to
sentencing reform is giving judges discretion," said Anita Marton, of the
Legal Action Center, a public-policy group in New York. "This tries to chip
away at that but it doesn't get to the heart of the issue. This proposal is
not going to affect the vast majority of offenders."