TIME TO MOVE ON DRUG LAW REFORM

With New York State's legislative session scheduled to end next Thursday,
and election-year politics in the air, the Democrat-led Assembly and Gov.
George Pataki unveiled separate proposals last week to break the partisan
gridlock that has doomed previous efforts at reforming the notoriously
harsh Rockefeller-era drug laws. The state is now close to achieving a
decent compromise bill. Neither side should let politics-as-usual stand in
the way.

Yesterday the Republican-controlled State Senate passed a plan by the
governor that, while far too timid, is an improvement over the ideas Mr.
Pataki has floated in the past. The Assembly, meanwhile, has approved a
bill that is more expansive but still defers to the governor's wishes on a
number of points. The seeds now exist for a compromise that would
significantly expand the use of drug treatment programs as an alternative
to incarceration for nonviolent drug offenders. It would also mark a
retreat from the tragic 30-year-old policy of imposing egregiously long
prison terms for possessing or selling relatively small amounts of drugs.
But the governor and the Assembly need to move quickly, or the moment will
be lost.

Mr. Pataki's new bill would allow more addicted low-level defendants to
undergo drug treatment in lieu of serving lengthy prison terms and grant
judges limited leeway to overrule a prosecutor's refusal to allow a
defendant to enter a drug treatment program. Mr. Pataki has also backed off
from his insistence last year on linking reform to tougher penalties for
marijuana possession, a non-starter for Assembly Democrats.

Real disagreements remain, not least over Mr. Pataki's unduly narrow
definition of the pool of defendants eligible for diversion from prison,
the scope of retroactivity and his clunky system for allowing judicial
overrides when district attorneys deny certain defendants the drug
treatment option. Bridging such differences now presents an urgent test of
leadership for Albany's entire cast of would-be drug law reformers - but
especially for Governor Pataki, who stands to gain the most if reform succeeds.