INFLEXIBLE DRUG LAWS

For more than a quarter-century, New York has imposed some of the
toughest, most rigid prison sentences on drug offenders. But there is
now ample proof that these laws, enacted under Governor Nelson
Rockefeller, have not cut drug trafficking or addiction. Their main
effect has been to fill state prisons with thousands of low-level drug
users at enormous public cost.

The current laws are the product of a time when America was first
confronting the rapid rise in narcotics trafficking. Drug use was
infiltrating suburbs and middle-class communities. Substance-abuse
treatment techniques were in their infancy, and politicians wanted to
address public fears of drugdriven crime.

Governor Rockefeller's national political aspirations may have helped
to move him toward harsh criminal penalties. But his drug laws mostly
grew out of frustration with ineffective treatment programs and a
belief that tough mandatory sentences could deter drug pushers. That
is why the laws require, for example, minimum sentences of 15 years to
life for a first-time offender caught selling as little as two ounces
(57 grams) of cocaine.

Even at the time of enactment in 1973, there was intense opposition to
this inflexible, one-size-fits-all approach to sentencing. The
Democrats were opposed, as were civil liberties groups, court
administrators and district attorneys.

New York State has spent some $4 billion building prison cells in the
past two decades. There are now more than 70,000 inmates in the
system, up from 12,500 in 1973. Yet at the same time drug treatment
programs have become more effective. There are now real options to
incarceration, such as allowing courts to offer low-level, nonviolent
offenders the opportunity to avoid prison by completing treatment and
staying clean. The costly lesson of the Rockefeller drug laws is that
extremely long sentences cannot by themselves solve the drug problem.