BILL FROM ASSEMBLY'S DEMOCRATIC MAJORITY IS A CRIME

The Assembly's Democratic majority today launches a drive to soften
state drug laws. Pray it fails, because at risk is continued success
in the war on crime.

They're rolling out legislation pushed by so-called reformers who have
long agitated to weaken penalties under the tough Rockefeller drug
laws. The bill is a dream come true for dealers, as well as for
proponents of decriminalization.

The measure is based on the outdated perception that the Rockefeller
laws have packed prisons with hapless addicts and unwitting first-time
offenders - when actually, the statutes have played an important role
in cleaning up the streets.

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and his members act as if the
superstringent laws, enacted in the 1970s - under which simple
possession of cocaine could lead to life in prison - are still in
place. They're not.

In fact, the harshest provisions have been repealed. Reforms in 2004
and 2005 abolished life sentences for drug crimes and gave inmates
doing time under the old law the chance to win lighter sentences.

Even those changes went too far.

A report by Special Narcotics Prosecutor Bridget Brennan looked at 65
drug convicts who got shorter terms.

Only one fit the reformers' stereotype of a low-level, nonviolent
offender serving an unduly harsh sentence. The rest were kingpins and
hard-core dealers with violent histories who belonged behind bars.

The reality is that most offenders who deal to support their habits
are diverted into treatment. By and large, druggies going upstate are
gang members who run drug markets in housing projects and abandoned
buildings - terrorizing entire neighborhoods.

The Assembly would make many of those gangsters eligible for probation
or a few months in local jail. Judges would have final word on who
gets leniency - not prosecutors with a fuller picture of offender
backgrounds.

Brennan and others on the front lines of the drug wars strongly oppose
the Assembly's wholesale changes. And a sentencing reform commission
has argued for a more cautious approach, preserving mandatory terms
for most serious drug crimes.

New Yorkers must not forget the destruction that the trade in crack
cocaine, heroin and other narcotics wreaked on the city. Nor should
there be any doubt of a clear connection between trafficking and
crime. Nor any doubt that tough laws gave police the backing they
needed to rid the streets of very bad, very dangerous types.

Those laws, as modified, strike the right balance - allowing treatment
for addicts but delivering justice against those who spread mayhem.

Gov. Paterson and the state Senate must stop the Assembly's madness.