NEW YORK TIMES Editorial: The mandatory-sentencing craze that drove up the prison population tenfold, pushing state corrections costs to bankrupting levels, was rooted in New York’s infamous Rockefeller drug laws. These laws, which mandated lengthy sentences for nonviolent, first-time offenders, were approved 40 years ago next month. They did little to curtail drug use in New York or in other states that mimicked them, while they filled prisons to bursting with nonviolent addicts who would have been more effectively and more cheaply dealt with through treatment programs.
The country is beginning to realize that it cannot enforce or imprison its way out of the addiction problem. But to create broadly accessible and effective treatment strategies for the millions of people who need them, it must abandon the “drug war” approach to addiction that has dominated the national discourse in favor of a policy that treats addiction as a public health issue… (more)
EDITOR: Through Common Sense for Drug Policy, its Drug War Facts, and other drug policy reform efforts, our publisher devoted twenty-five years of his life to convey the above message. It is gratifying that what initially was perceived as anathema have by now become main stream. That is what political activism is about. Academics originate ideas; political activists popularize them; ultimately politicians run to the head of the parade to enact them. It takes much patience and perseverance, but in the long run – often decades- good ideas can be made to prevail.
