DRUG LAWS THAT MISFIRED

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 Gov. Nelson
Rockefeller, have not cut drug trafficking or addiction. Instead,
their main effect has been to fill state prisons with thousands of
low-level drug users at enormous public cost. Even some of the
original sponsors of these laws have come to agree that it is time to
find a better approach. Unfortunately, Gov. George Pataki has been too
timid to offer any meaningful change to the drug laws. But there is
still time in the remaining days of the legislative session for
lawmakers like Joseph Bruno, the Republican majority leader of the
State Senate, to take the lead in fashioning drug law reform. Even
Republican elders like Warren Anderson, the former State Senate
majority leader, and Douglas Barclay and John Dunne, both of whom
voted to enact Governor Rockefeller's proposals in 1973, have become
strong proponents for ending a failed experiment that seemed like a
good idea 27 years ago.

The current laws are the product of a time when the nation 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 drug-driven 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
of cocaine.

Even at the time of enactment, 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,
district attorneys and Mayor John Lindsay of New York City. In order
to push the proposal through, Governor Rockefeller had to make a rare
appearance before a joint hearing of the Senate and Assembly Codes
Committees to lobby personally.

Mr. Barclay, who was the Senate sponsor of the bill and chairman of
the Senate Codes Committee in 1973, says there was strong pressure to
do something about narcotics and the Rockefeller approach seemed
logical at the time. But he now supports change because the laws have
failed to achieve their goals. He and other Republican reformers are
not pushing for leniency. Instead, they want to end the pointlessly
rigid mandatory sentences and give judges discretion to mete out
appropriate punishments.

Much has changed in the past quarter-century. 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. Over the years, more and more prison space has been devoted to
locking up nonviolent drug offenders. 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. Governor
Rockefeller was misguided on these laws, but he was also a pragmatist
capable of facing up to facts. It is time the Legislature exhibited
some pragmatism of its own by repealing these outmoded laws in favor
of a sentencing approach that takes into account today's reality.