Noted.

FALLING ROCK: On March 27, two days after hundreds of people convened at his Manhattan office to demand the repeal of the state's controversial Rockefeller drug laws, New York Governor David Paterson announced plans to significantly reform the infamous legislation. Passed in 1973, the Rockefeller laws were the first to impose stringent mandatory jail sentences for drug crimes. They inspired a wave of similar laws across the country, which flooded the nation's prisons with minor drug offenders. Nationwide, more than 70 percent of those now incarcerated for drug felonies are black or Latino. The proposed reforms would grant judges discretion to send many first- and second-time nonviolent offenders to substance-abuse treatment programs instead of jail and would expand the state's drug treatment infrastructure.

According to Caitlin Dunklee, coordinator of Drop the Rock, an advocacy organization that supports total repeal, the changes are "a beginning and not an end." The reforms leave in place some sentencing requirements that limit judicial discretion on more serious offenses, and Drop the Rock estimates that fewer than 1,500 of the nearly 12,000 people incarcerated under the laws will be eligible for resentencing. "I'm beginning to get some e-mails from families expecting their loved ones will be coming home to them," Dunklee says, "and in most cases that's not true."

Still, the legislation reflects a growing consensus that drug abuse is a public health issue better served by increased treatment, not jail time. "New York State could go from having some of the worst drug laws," says Gabriel Sayegh of the Drug Policy Alliance, to being a model for getting us "out of the war on drugs that we've been stuck in for thirty-five years."SARAH ARNOLD

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