The cruelly unusual Rockefeller Drug Laws represent some of the worst penal policies New York State has ever adopted. Signed in 1973 by the extravagantly wealthy governor at the time, Nelson A. Rockefeller, they “mandated minimum prison terms for the possession or sale of narcotics.” Well, the laws have basically been an utter failure since their inception. They never curbed drug use and basically put a disproportionate amount of minorities in jail. Thankfully, the New York State Assembly finally decided the archaic laws need to be reformed and will reinstate “judicial discretion to the sentencing process, striking a balance between punishment for violent and repeat drug convicts and rehabilitation alternatives for lower level and first-time offenders.”

But not everyone was so convinced. Political posturer and anti-graffiti asshole City Councilmember Peter Vallone Jr., thinks the backward looking laws should remain in place:

Vallone said in a statement that the “so-called ‘draconian’” laws were passed in the first place to give prosecutors power in the sentencing of drug criminals. “This action,” he said of the reforms, “will bring us back to those days” when “judges were putting drug dealers back on the street over prosecutors’ objections.”
“These dealers are not addicts who need treatment,” Vallone went on, “they are criminals who bring death to our children.”

|Queens Courier|