03/29/09 - ATIN - In an event that is likely to be viewed from history's perspective as perhaps the key pivitol moment for drug reform in the United States, New York state legislators, pushed by reform-minded Gov. Paterson, are set to reach a deal to repeal the state's draconian 1970s "Rockefeller Laws."

The Rockefeller Laws were passed during the tenure of Gov. Nelson Rockefeller whilst a  wave of crime accompanied the surge of heroin addiction that occurred in the 1970s. The laws, which mandated long sentences for dealing and even for possession, served as a model for later tough anti-drug legislation that swept the states and even was adpoted at the federal level. These laws have served as the basis for the growth of the "prison-industrial complex" confluence of interested groups - police, prison guards DAs, etc.. - and served as the engine of an unprecedented prison building boom that has seen the nation's prison population soar to about 2.2M persons, on a per capita basis a prison population many times larger than that of any other nation.

Until now the progress of drug law reform, and the fight against the "prison industrial complex" of interested groups, has been slow and intermittent. But that has changed lately as state after state has announced major, and sometimes sweeping, proposed changes in their approaches toward drugs, moving away from punitive prison sentences toward mandating treatment, whilst putting far more discretion into the hands ful of judges about which approach to take.

In recent years it has become clear from polling data that the public has been increasingly fed up with the system of harsh mandated prison sentences for even low level possession cases. But politicians, influenced by the disproprotionately politically poweful prison industrial complex, barely moved to reform the system.

It has taken big-time economic pressures, in the form of deep recession induced budget shortfalls, to combine with the public's drug reform readiness, for policy change finally to start to take hold. And there are few places politicians can go to save the kind of money that drug policy refiorm is set to bring, because the policy of punitive drug prohibition was hugely expensive.

Repeal of New York's Rockefeller Laws is set to save Albany a whopping $250M a year. And as reform becomes even more extensive, New York politicians are proceeding cautiously at first, that savings number could rise sharply, according to news reports.

Newswire Staff

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