DRUG LAW REFORMS: MARGINAL OR REAL?

"The Rockefeller drug laws will be no more," declared New York Gov. George
Pataki as he signed legislation in mid-December trimming back some of the
ferociously severe drug offense penalties enacted 30 years ago under Gov.
Nelson Rockefeller.

From now on, a New Yorker will have to be caught with 8 ounces of cocaine
or heroin to trigger a mandatory sentence of eight to 20 years -- not the
mere 4 ounces that previously triggered a chilling 15 years to life behind
bars. Plus, parole will be allowed earlier than before, and about 400
inmates serving life sentences can ask the courts to re-examine their cases.

Because New York ushered in the era of exceedingly harsh drug laws that
then swept coast to coast, this legislative shift -- after 12 years of
intense efforts to enact reform -- has clear national significance.

And it highlights a trend -- registered in the last two years from Michigan
to Texas, Indiana to Hawaii, Delaware to Nebraska -- of legislatures either
reducing mandatory drug case sentences or substituting treatment for prison
time for first-time offenders.

But are we seeing a turn to a gentler, less judgmental America -- or simply
a pragmatic move to tame the explosive growth of incarcerations and
big-time expenses for all the new prisons these mandatory laws have made
necessary?

Nicolas Eyle, the Syracuse-based leader of ReconsiDer, a major New York
reform group, dismisses the softening of the Rockefeller laws as "a joke"
that gets the New York Legislature off the hook for having the country's
harshest laws but "won't help the drug problem, or reduce the black market
in drugs, or stop violence."

Two mega-issues, ones we all like to avoid, lurk behind every debate --
state or federal -- on drug policy. The first is prohibition. It took two
amendments to the Constitution and a wave of gangster-led criminal activity
to prove it didn't work for alcohol, so why should we ever expect it to
work on drugs?

The second issue is race. An overwhelmingly disproportionate number of
African-Americans is imprisoned for drug offenses. We have a global
record-breaking 2.2 million prisoners. But black Americans, though just 12
percent of the U.S. population, are 44 percent of our population behind
bars -- hundreds of thousands on narcotics charges even though surveys show
actual drug use among blacks is no greater than and often far less than
that of whites.

A prime reason: police routinely target blacks, especially young males in
poor neighborhoods. A sample result: While blacks are 28 percent of
Maryland's population, they're 90 percent of its prisoners convicted on
drug charges. Nationally, one in three black men aged 20 to 29 is in
prison, on probation or parole.

Behind this is what Eric Sterling, president of the Washington-based
Criminal Justice Policy Foundation, calls an unrelenting, historic
insistence on "white privilege" in American society. Glance back over our
centuries of slavery and then the widespread lynchings and systematic
denial of blacks' right to vote that followed Reconstruction. Most of white
America remained silent, condoning the rank discrimination.

In the 1970s U.S. prison rates, which had been stable for decades,
escalated suddenly. The end of legally enforced segregation coincided with
Richard Nixon's successful 1968 presidential run, pledging to restore "law
and order." Nixon's "Southern strategy" was designed to capture white
voters abandoning the Democratic Party because of its newfound support for
civil rights. Nixon declared a "war on drugs," not just to reduce crime,
Sterling argues, "but as a symbolic tool to demonstrate intolerance for
cultural ferment, youth protest, and black protest."

The "war on drugs" was pushed by Ronald Reagan and other presidents, indeed
not even quashed during Bill Clinton's presidency. The Rockefeller laws and
other state get-tough statutes proliferated. U.S. incarceration rates
skyrocketed to their current world-record levels. Today, Sterling argues,
"local police who enforced segregation laws for 70 years are making 1.6
million drug arrests each year -- disproportionately arrests of
African-Americans."

You can question that precise cause and effect. But there's no denying the
linked phenomena -- millions of blacks incarcerated and therefore denied
employment (who hires ex-felons?), excluded from housing, credit, college
admissions or loans, and even the right to vote after serving time.

And still, white America is mostly silent.

Clearly, black society faces self-generated cultural problems. Yet even if
every young black shaped up to Bill Cosby behavior norms, we'd still have
what's been called our prison-industrial complex, from ambitious district
attorneys to sheriffs to prison guards and privatized prison companies, not
to mention opportunistic law-and-order politicos, blocking the road to
essential drug policy reform.

Imagine diverting the billions now squandered on drug prosecutions and
prison sentences to treatment, neighborhood-based family counseling and
youth programs. We'd have a shot at safer streets, less dependency and
fresh life chances for millions who now see no hope. But let's be honest:
marginal shifts in today's draconian sentencing laws won't get us there.