NEW YORK'S NEW STATE OF MIND ON DRUGS

Officials have agreed to repeal severe drug laws that wasted law
enforcement resources and created an incarceration crisis. Now
Congress should follow their lead.

For more than 30 years, New York's draconian drug laws have been among
the toughest in the nation, requiring sentences of 15 years to life
even for nonviolent first-time offenders. Worse, New York's early
example was followed by states across the country, furthering a flawed
strategy that was as harmful to society, in many ways, as drug use
itself. The result has been wasted law enforcement resources -- as if
police could arrest away drug addiction -- and a national
incarceration crisis. Millions of lives were destroyed.

So we were pleased to hear that New York Gov. David Paterson and a
group of legislators have agreed to repeal the state's mandatory
minimum sentences for low-level drug offenders, permit some addicts to
go into treatment rather than face prison time, and allow inmates in
some cases to seek reductions of their sentences. It represents
nothing less than the demise of the Rockefeller drug laws, named after
Gov. Nelson Rockefeller, who pushed them through in 1973.