ROCKEFELLER DRUG LAWS ARE A GROSS INJUSTICE

As one who lived in upstate New York for 13 years, I am pleased to see major
New York state newspapers finally calling the Rockefeller drug laws what
they really are: gross injustice. That charge is serious, and correcting
these laws is no longer optional. If Assembly Leader Sheldon Silver is
holding out on reform, let's make it clear that he's standing four-square in
support of injustice; tough on crime can only equate with injustice in
totalitarian nations.

I'm also pleased that the state Conference of Catholic Bishops has spoken
out against these laws. Rightly so. St. Augustine said that unjust laws
"have not the nature of law, but of violence.'' Reforming the state's drug
laws is morally obligatory; it's a matter of undoing an unconscionable
system of state-sponsored violence. In his comments on intemperance,
Augustine described what a new drug policy should look like in a society
that's humane and enlightened about substance abuse: "Such things are cured
not by bitterness, harshness, and severity, but by teaching rather than
prohibition, by gentle admonitions rather than threats.''

Paul M. Bischke, St. Paul, Minn.