Wednesday, May 26, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

EDITORIAL: Drug law sentences

Perhaps there is hope that a modicum of sanity will eventually prevail in the nation's drug war, after all.

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed on Tuesday, Barry McCaffrey -- the same Gen. Barry McCaffrey who has been an ardent drug warrior and previously served as the nation's drug czar -- co-authored a piece calling for an end to New York state's "draconian" Rockefeller laws, which mandate harsh prison sentences for even many minor drug offenses.

"The laws enjoy little public or political support," Gen. McCaffrey wrote with co-author Mitchell S. Rosenthal. "Just about all interested parties -- legislators, advocates of various persuasions, and all sectors of the criminal justice system -- favor change."

The pair go on to recommend that most drug offenders receive treatment, not prison time.

Of course change will be slow until politicians muster the will to fight back against charges that backing such reforms means they favor passing out joints to pre-teens. But the fact that a former drug czar now argues that locking up nonviolent drug offenders makes no sense -- on the commentary pages of a newspaper whose editorial stance has been virulently pro drug war -- offers progress.