The New York Times

Monday, June 05, 2000

Drug Laws That Misfired

For more than a quarter-century, New York has imposed some of the toughest, most rigid prison sentences on drug offenders. But there is now ample proof that these laws, enacted under Gov. Nelson Rockefeller, have not cut drug trafficking or addiction. Instead, their main effect has been to fill state prisons with thousands of low-level drug users at enormous public cost. Even some of the original sponsors of these laws have come to agree that it is time to find a better approach.

Unfortunately, Gov. George Pataki has been too timid to offer any meaningful change to the drug laws. But there is still time in the remaining days of the legislative session for lawmakers like Joseph Bruno, the Republican majority leader of the State Senate, to take the lead in fashioning drug law reform. Even Republican elders like Warren Anderson, the former State Senate majority leader, and Douglas Barclay and John Dunne, both of whom voted to enact Governor Rockefeller's proposals in 1973, have become strong proponents for ending a failed experiment that seemed like a good idea 27 years ago.

The current laws are the product of a time when the nation was first confronting the rapid rise in narcotics trafficking. Drug use was infiltrating suburbs and middle-class communities. Substance-abuse treatment techniques were in their infancy, and politicians wanted to address public fears of drug-driven crime.

Governor Rockefeller's national political aspirations may have helped to move him toward harsh criminal penalties. But his drug laws mostly grew out of frustration with ineffective treatment programs and a belief that tough mandatory sentences could deter drug pushers. That is why the laws require, for example, minimum sentences of 15 years to life for a first-time offender caught selling as little as two ounces of cocaine.

Even at the time of enactment, there was intense opposition to this inflexible, one-size-fits-all approach to sentencing. The Democrats were opposed, as were civil liberties groups, court administrators, district attorneys and Mayor John Lindsay of New York City. In order to push the proposal through, Governor Rockefeller had to make a rare appearance before a joint hearing of the Senate and Assembly Codes Committees to lobby personally.

Mr. Barclay, who was the Senate sponsor of the bill and chairman of the Senate Codes Committee in 1973, says there was strong pressure to do something about narcotics and the Rockefeller approach seemed logical at the time. But he now supports change because the laws have failed to achieve their goals. He and other Republican reformers are not pushing for leniency. Instead, they want to end the pointlessly rigid mandatory sentences and give judges discretion to mete out appropriate punishments.

Much has changed in the past quarter-century. New York State has spent some $4 billion building prison cells in the past two decades. There are now more than 70,000 inmates in the system, up from 12,500 in 1973. Over the years, more and more prison space has been devoted to locking up nonviolent drug offenders. Yet at the same time, drug treatment programs have become more effective. There are now real options to incarceration, such as allowing courts to offer low-level, nonviolent offenders the opportunity to avoid prison by completing treatment and staying clean.

The costly lesson of the Rockefeller drug laws is that extremely long sentences cannot by themselves solve the drug problem. Governor Rockefeller was misguided on these laws, but he was also a pragmatist capable of facing up to facts. It is time the Legislature exhibited some pragmatism of its own by repealing these outmoded laws in favor of a sentencing approach that takes into account today's reality.