New York's new state of mind on drugs

For more than 30 years, New York's draconian drug laws have been among the toughest in the nation, requiring sentences of 15 years to life even for nonviolent first-time offenders. Worse, New York's early example was followed by states across the country, furthering a flawed strategy that was as harmful to society, in many ways, as drug use itself. The result has been wasted law enforcement resources -- as if police could arrest away drug addiction -- and a national incarceration crisis. Millions of lives were destroyed.

So we were pleased to hear that New York Gov. David Paterson and a group of legislators have agreed to repeal the state's mandatory minimum sentences for low-level drug offenders, permit some addicts to go into treatment rather than face prison time, and allow inmates in some cases to seek reductions of their sentences. It represents nothing less than the demise of the Rockefeller drug laws, named after Gov. Nelson Rockefeller, who pushed them through in 1973.