N.Y. JOINS CAMPAIGN TO REFORM DRUG LAWS

Mandatory Minimums Are Not Working, Many Officials Concede

WASHINGTON -- When New York Gov. George Pataki announced plans to reduce
prison terms for non-violent drug offenders last week, he joined an
emerging national movement in acknowledging that harsh punishments have
contributed to failed drug policy.

In New Mexico this month, a state advisory committee proposed radical
changes to existing drug laws that would do away with criminal penalties
for marijuana possession and eliminate mandatory-minimum prison sentences
for drug-related offenses.

The Massachusetts Legislature is considering restructuring the state's drug
laws to reduce steep mandatory-mini-mum punishments for first-time offenders.

And in Michigan, officials recently replaced mandatory life sentences with
parole-eligible prison terms for first-time cocaine and heroin offenders.

"The impetus for drug law reform in New York and across the nation has
never been stronger," says Edward Jurith, acting director of the White
House Office of National Drug Control Policy. "We cannot simply arrest our
way out of the problem of drug abuse and drug-related crime."

Long mandatory-minimum prison sentences for drug offenders were the rage in
the 1970s and '80s, when officials began to confront serious drug-related
crime in their states.

Nearly three decades later, those strict policies, some of which bought
many first-time drug offenders up to 15 years in prison, have only driven
up prison populations while having little influence on addiction, many
officials now acknowledge.

In New York, where existing drug laws are considered among the harshest and
date to the early 1970s, the new strategy "balances the need to crack down
on drug kingpins with common sense proposals to address overly severe
provisions of the Rockefeller-era drug laws," Pataki says.

Instead of 15-years-to-life terms for first-time, non-violent offenders
convicted of the most serious drug felonies, Pataki's plan calls for a
minimum of slightly more than eight years to life.

"Pataki has joined the ranks of state officials troubled that these
mandatory sentences have failed to accomplish what they were intended to
accomplish," says Laura Sager, executive director of Families Against
Mandatory Minimums. When the current drug laws were enacted in New York,
the state prison population numbered more than 12,000. That number has
increased to about 70,000 today, Pataki spokeswoman Caroline Quartararo says.

About 21,000 of those inmates are there for drug-related convictions. About
70% of them were involved in non-violent offenses.

"We want to keep the violent predators in prison longer and find treatment
for the low-level, non-violent drug offenders," Quartararo says.

Frank Carney, executive director of the Massachusetts Sentencing
Commission, says proposed changes pending before the state Legislature
"represent a comprehensive re-structuring of the drug laws toward moderation."

The commission, as in New York, has proposed reducing mandatory sentences
for non-violent first offenders from 15 years to a minimum of eight years.

"We found the sentences to be disproportionately long when compared to
punishments for rape and armed robbery," Carney says.

"Now there is a growing awareness that in the drug war there needs to be a
greater emphasis on treatment and perhaps less on taking prisoners."