Changes Made to Drug Laws Don't Satisfy Advocates

drug laws that penalize some drug dealers convicted for the first time more severely than the penalties for murderers or rapists have succeeded in driving up the prison population tenfold. But what the laws haven't succeeded at doing is limiting the drug trade. Now, with prison costs soaring, some states are finally backing away from the mandatory sentencing guidelines and embracing treatment options instead for some drug defendants, many of whom are addicts. After starting the whole mandatory sentencing trend 30 years ago, New York took a preliminary but welcome stab this week at revising its sentencing practices.

About time.

Gov. Nelson Rockefeller spawned a disastrous national trend in the 1970's with drug laws that required mandatory minimum sentences, including 15 years to life for the most serious drug felony. This policy tied the hands of judges in cases where stiff sentences were not warranted and encouraged a few hard-core judges to throw away the keys.

The Rockefeller laws swept away the sensible policy that treated drug kingpins more severely than small-time peddlers. Under the new arrangement, an addict selling a small amount of drugs to feed a habit was treated no differently than a bulk-rate dealer moving drugs into the state by the truckload.

New York State legislators who were fearful of being cast as "soft on crime" if they revised the law seem to have had a change of heart after hearing the stories of first-time offenders who have been separated from their families by unjust life sentences and forced to watch their children grow up in prison visiting rooms.

The changes proposed by the Legislature would reduce the maximum sentences for the most serious offenses and would allow the inmates serving the longest sentences to seek retroactive reductions. The new policy also doubles the amounts of drugs that an offender would have to be caught with to get the harshest penalties for possession crimes - but leaves the weight thresholds intact for sales and attempted-sales crimes.

The State Legislature has done the easy part. Now it needs to deal with the core issue: doing away with mandatory minimum sentences, and leaving sentencing to the discretion of judges.