Tokin' Move
AFTER SAYING FOR years that something really should be done about the draconian, 30-year-old Rockefeller drug lawsthen doing nothing about themmembers of the state assembly and senate have finally put a solid proposal on the table.
The, um, joint legislative conference committee has proposed rolling back, at least a little, some of the harshest sentences mandated by Rockefeller. If this goes through, instead of getting a mandatory 15-to-life for selling two ounces of pot (or carrying four), you'll only get a mandatory 3-to-10!
We aren't holding our breath. Passage of the sentencing reform is knotted up with another proposal: to place lower-level, nonviolent drug offenders in treatment instead of prison. Rational as that may sound, it ain't gonna happen. Not for a while, anyway.
Why is there an argument at all? It's obvious to everyone involved that the Rockefeller laws never accomplished a damn thing except to fill the prisons and give the cops busywork to do. They never stopped anyone from using or selling drugs, and keeping nonviolent drug offenders locked up costs the state half a billion dollars each year. And that's to say nothing of the availability of drugs in prison.
Yes, it's comforting to know that state legislators have finally admitted that something must be done about the laws. We just wish they'd shut up and do it already.