AD BLITZ LATEST PUSH TO REFORM DRUG LAWS

Albany -- Proposals to change sentencing mandates have yet to pass, so
advocates are taking to TV airwaves

An advertising blitz on the Rockefeller Drug Laws will hit airwaves across
New York next week as advocates make a final push for reforms in the tough
sentencing mandates before the Legislature ends its regular session.

So far, lawmakers have failed to approve any of a half-dozen proposals
touted in 1999 to ease the 26-year-old laws that require minimum prison
sentences of 15 years for even low-level drug offenders. Reform advocates
hope the television ad campaign will motivate the public to pressure
elected officials into action before the legislative session wraps up June 16.

"Here in Albany, much of the major legislation is put through in the last
week,'' said John Dunne, chairman of the Coalition for Effective Criminal
Justice, one of the advocacy groups that helped produce the campaign. "So
the timing is fine.''

The TV spots will be aired throughout the state, but several people
familiar with the blitz said Wednesday the ads will run mainly in upstate
rural and western New York areas, where the staunchest opposition to the
reforms is based.

Under the Rockefeller laws, which were enacted in 1973, a person with no
prior record and no history of violence who is convicted of a single sale
of two ounces or possession of four ounces of a narcotic faces a mandatory
minimum sentence of 15 years to life. No other state has such a tough law,
nor does the federal government.

A wide, bipartisan range of lawmakers and advocates -- including Gov.
George Pataki, a Republican, and Chief Judge Judith S. Kaye, a Democrat --
have called for reforms in 1999, an off-election year. Few people on either
side of the political spectrum disagree that some kind of change is in order.

But Capitol gridlock between Pataki and the Democratic Assembly on nearly
every legislative issue this session has also stymied movement on the
Rockefeller laws. Fearing his membership would appear "soft on crime'' in
the November 2000 elections, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver last month
indicated he would not support Pataki's proposal to modestly scale back the
laws. Silver, who declined an interview request Wednesday, so far has not
allowed other proposals to be brought to a vote in his chamber.

"The last couple of weeks have certainly darkened the prospects'' for
reform in 1999, said Assemblyman Jeffrion Aubry, D-Queens, who authored a
bill to repeal the prison terms set by the Rockefeller guidelines.

The ad campaign, Aubry said, aims to "further educate the public on the
nature of the law, and what we believe are inequities and injustices
associated with it. A lot of people don't understand what the Rockefeller
Drug Laws are and don't understand how they are applied. Changing public
opinion has been part of what the whole effort is all about.''

The TV ads are still being edited but will be ready to be aired by Tuesday,
said David Mickenberg of the Lindesmith Center in Manhattan. The advocacy
group is preparing the ads, but Mickenberg did not immediately know the
cost of the campaign or where specifically the TV spots will be aired.