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You are here: Home / Politics / War On Drugs / The War on Your Neighbor, aka the War on Drugs / The End of Rockefeller Laws?

The End of Rockefeller Laws?

by John Cole|  March 26, 20098:53 am| 39 Comments

This post is in: The War on Your Neighbor, aka the War on Drugs

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Some good news:

Gov. David A. Paterson and New York legislative leaders have reached an agreement to dismantle much of what remains of the state’s strict 1970s-era drug laws, once among the toughest in the nation.

The deal would repeal many of the mandatory minimum prison sentences now in place for lower-level drug felons, giving judges the authority to send first-time nonviolent offenders to treatment instead of prison.

The plan would also expand drug treatment programs and widen the reach of drug courts at a cost of at least $50 million.

New York’s drug sentencing laws, imposed during a heroin epidemic that was devastating urban areas nearly four decades ago, helped spur a nationwide trend toward mandatory sentences in drug crimes. But as many other states moved to roll back the mandatory minimum sentences in recent years, New York kept its laws on the books, leaving prosecutors with the sole discretion of whether offenders could be sent to treatment.

“We’re putting judges in the position to determine sentences based on the facts of a case, and not on mandatory minimum sentences,” said Jeffrion L. Aubry, an assemblyman from Queens who has led the effort for repeal.

“To me, that is the restoration of justice.”

While good news, that still seems to me that they are trying to do things on the cheap. Depending on how many people have their sentences modified and the number of fewer people incarcerated, I can imagine a drug court and treatment programs blowing through 50 million in no time. There are people who can probably speak from a position of expertise on this issue (Mark Kleiman, I’m looking at you), but I imagine a substantial sum of money will be needed for rehab programs.

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39Comments

  1. 1.

    Wisdom

    March 26, 2009 at 8:59 am

    I guess NY wants to be the next Mexico.

    Always cheaper to incarcerate in the long run.

  2. 2.

    mistermix

    March 26, 2009 at 9:05 am

    No amount of money is enough if the goal is to treat everyone, because the success rate for non-motivated addicts sentenced to rehab is abysmal.

    Non-violent recreational users, and addicts who don’t want to quit, just need to be turned loose. There is nothing society needs to do with those people, because there’s either nothing to fix, or nothing that can be fixed.

    Mandatory rehab is as stupid as mandatory minimum sentencing.

  3. 3.

    Comrade Jake

    March 26, 2009 at 9:13 am

    OT, but I’m watching Judd Gregg spout off on Good Morning America about how the President’s budget is going to bankrupt the country. It seems that the only thing these asshats need to do to get on the teevee is to say something outrageous.

  4. 4.

    Rook

    March 26, 2009 at 9:16 am

    Sigh.

    As a 20 year veteran of the treatment trade, I can say with some authority that it costs more to keep a person in prison one day then send them to treatment for one day.

    It’s less a matter of where to find the money, and more a matter of from where to transfer the money from. I can guess the DOC (Dept of Cash) is not going to let go of their money easily.

  5. 5.

    BenA

    March 26, 2009 at 9:24 am

    I’d think there might be some money available after all you’re not paying to send every moron with a couple of tabs of acid to prison.

  6. 6.

    A Mom Anon

    March 26, 2009 at 9:25 am

    It’s not just that treatment is cheaper than putting people in jail,it also has less social costs in the long term. If addicts get treatment and are motivated(some of that motivation might come from a culture that’s less about punishing every mistake and stigmatizing addiction at every turn), then families aren’t torn up,days aren’t missed from work,less crimes get committed,more kids aren’t growing up in homes where addiction gets all the attention and resources and maybe some of this madness can end. Maybe.

  7. 7.

    Zifnab

    March 26, 2009 at 9:25 am

    @Wisdom:

    Always cheaper to incarcerate in the long run.

    I can’t imagine how rehabilitating a single individual would cost upwards of $30 – $60k / year for 5 to 10 years. If you’re unmotivated, your rehabilitation rate might be low, but a) you’re not living in a taxpayer funded cell and b) next time you might try harder not to get caught.

    In the Great American Drug War, that’s all that really matters. Don’t get caught. It’s as true of the ganja as it is of cigarettes and alcohol for minors. That’s all the state can reasonably ask for – don’t do drugs where we can see you.

  8. 8.

    Tom

    March 26, 2009 at 9:28 am

    Well, look, John. How much do you think it costs to keep a person in prison per year? Answer, about the tuition of a year at Harvard. We in California did that years ago, one of the few initiatives that have turned out to be a success. Although California still has a prison problem (due to three strikes laws) and are on the verge of bankruptcy (due to major unfunded initiatives), it isn’t because of the drug diversion program. It is actually cheaper to divert a petty drug user into a drug program than to incarcerate him for long periods of time.

  9. 9.

    Dave

    March 26, 2009 at 9:29 am

    The cost to keep someone in prison is a lot more than treatment. Figure the daily cost of incarceration, food, medical attention, upkeep in the prison, guard pay and everything else.
     
    As an example, a five-year study in CA found that the annual cost of incarceration was over $21,000. The annual cost of treatment was just over $5,300. And a RAND study found that treatment did a better job of reducing societal costs (crime, job loss, etc.) than incarceration.
     
    Every aspect of the Drug War has been an abysmal failure.

  10. 10.

    cleek

    March 26, 2009 at 9:32 am

    i forget where i read it, but i seem to recall reading, once upon a time, somewhere, that it costs less to keep a person in reha…

  11. 11.

    The Other Steve

    March 26, 2009 at 9:34 am

    Why should we pay for treatment? It’s their own fault they used drugs.

    Better to encourage them to take more drugs so they OD. Lot cheaper to pick up the body then it is to haul them into court.

  12. 12.

    Bob In Pacifica

    March 26, 2009 at 9:37 am

    The drug warriors haven’t gotten the message. These DEA agents busting medical marijuana clinics should maybe go to the front lines of the last drug war, in Mexico, and get their fill.

  13. 13.

    GSD

    March 26, 2009 at 9:42 am

    The bottom line is the pharmaceutical companies don’t like the competition.

    -GSD

  14. 14.

    4tehlulz

    March 26, 2009 at 9:46 am

    They tried to make me pay for rehab, but I said "no, no, no".

  15. 15.

    A Mom Anon

    March 26, 2009 at 9:51 am

    @The Other Steve:

    Well that solves everything doesn’t it?

    For every person who doesn’t want help,there is at least one who does.

    It is possible to have compassion for people and not be a pushover or a doormat. Jeebus.

    The answer to every freaking problem isn’t more punishment.

  16. 16.

    vishnu schizt

    March 26, 2009 at 9:56 am

    @The Other Steve: It’s impossible to OD on the kind weed bruddah. I’m sure I’ve read most drug offenders are in prison for possessing, distributing or growing mother nature. But you know it is a "gateway" drug. All those ads for beer with all the tits and ass don’t have anything to do with "gateways" do they? You can drink yourself to death but the worst you can do is smoke yourself into a long nights sleep, after a cheese pizza of course.

  17. 17.

    NonyNony

    March 26, 2009 at 9:59 am

    @Zifnab:

    That’s all the state can reasonably ask for – don’t do drugs where we can see you.

    Heh. It’s funny how positively "Victorian" our attitudes are in this country. Everyone knows it goes on, but if we legalize it that would legitimize it. Horrors! How abominable!

    I wish we could get over this childish notion that just because something is legal that doesn’t make it good. It’s pretty easy to show that just because something is illegal that doesn’t make it immoral – why is it so hard for people to understand that the reverse can equally be true?

  18. 18.

    harlana pepper

    March 26, 2009 at 9:59 am

    A Mom Anon: totally agree!

  19. 19.

    Zifnab

    March 26, 2009 at 10:00 am

    @The Other Steve: I agree. In fact, it would be a lot cheaper and easier if, instead of obstructing access to drugs, the government provided drug offenders with all the narcotics they require.

    We could have some sort of reverse-rehab center where junkies could come to shoot up with concentrated product. Then, when the user slips into a comma or dies frothing at the mouth, we’ve got the person right there at the facility and can roll the body into a nearby incinerator. Hell, we could get the next junkie in line to do it for us. Then pick the guys pockets when they’re done. I mean, the proposal is practically cost neutral. Everyone wins.

  20. 20.

    Roger Moore

    March 26, 2009 at 10:02 am

    @Bob In Pacifica:

    These DEA agents busting medical marijuana clinics should maybe go to the front lines of the last drug war, in Mexico, and get their fill.

    But that would be dangerous! Why can’t they just do something that looks cool on TV? It’s not as though the war on some drugs is actually about preventing drug use.

  21. 21.

    harlana pepper

    March 26, 2009 at 10:03 am

    Oh good lord, just reading Hillary’s bombast about Mexican cartels — oh, I am just so glad she gets a chance to pontificate and act all tough. She seems to crave that for some reason but it makes me cringe. Maybe I’m being sexist? I dunno, she just doesn’t do it very well imo and maybe that’s me being sexist. I guess I will always see her as the "brainy chick" although what’s wrong with that, I’ll never know, but it obviously does not satisfy her need for power and influence.

    I wish I could find the pic of her reading a book at a football game when Bill was gov. I guess that is the image I have in my mind of Hill and I guess it’s stuck. Thing is, I never saw anything wrong with reading a book at a ball game if you are seriously uninterested in sports, which I always have been, but you want to "support your man." However, being older and looking back, I think I would have feigned interest and excitement and that is the Hill that we see now, a true polly-tician.

    e.g., getting old, it sucks

  22. 22.

    4tehlulz

    March 26, 2009 at 10:03 am

    >>Then, when the user slips into a comma or dies frothing at the mouth

    I would prefer to die like a rabid dog than fall into that accursed punctuation.

  23. 23.

    El Cid

    March 26, 2009 at 10:10 am

    Oh good lord, just reading Hillary’s bombast about Mexican cartels—oh, I am just so glad she gets a chance to pontificate and act all tough. She seems to crave that for some reason but it makes me cringe.

    FWIW, this tough speak regarding the narcotraffickers is spoken the same way by Mexico’s federal authorities. President Calderon does it all the time — as long as he is addressing merely domestic concerns.

    When the U.S. is brought into discussion, then the Mexican rhetoric of anti-U.S.-imperialism is revived, even by such a conservative toady as Calderon, and they object angrily to talk of being a ‘failed state’ (which HRC pointedly criticized as a term being used) and they blame the U.S. (appropriately) for being such a pernicious buyer of illegal drugs.

  24. 24.

    harlana pepper

    March 26, 2009 at 10:11 am

    I guess I’m just not up to a "drug war" right now, what with record unemployment, lack of health care, stoopid things like that, sorta take all my energy. We really fucking better not be gearing up for some kind of drug war bullshit. I don’t want to hear it, I don’t want to see the flashy graphics and Wolf Blitzer and urgent music and the blah, blah, blah. Please, no fucking drug wars because, honestly, I will lose it.

    If we are going to have a distraction, let it be something like Eric Cantor.

  25. 25.

    Ivan Ivanovich Renko

    March 26, 2009 at 10:16 am

    Sigh.

    And we continue to repeat the errors of alcohol Prohibition.

    Legalize it, regulate it, tax it, and let’s just fucking move on.

    (and yes, damn your eyes, I mean ALL "drugs." Either Americans are free men and women who can make the choices of what to put in to their bodies or they’re not– make up your goddamn mind)

  26. 26.

    argh

    March 26, 2009 at 10:18 am

    War always brings out the best in people.

    Amirite, "Wisdom?"

    "Then pick the guys pockets when they’re done." – see it’s ‘cuz Zifnab’s a lot better than them dirty junkies.

    It’s fun when this site becomes indistinguishable from scribblings of joyous nazi’s. Oops, I did the godwin. Back to you, problem-solvers.

    Mercy is so overrated. Until it’s your turn I mean.

  27. 27.

    Brian J

    March 26, 2009 at 10:20 am

    You have to wonder exactly how much of any money spent on rehab programs would be stimulative. After all, if there are a few sectors that are actually adding jobs overall, they are education, government, and health care. Perhaps an argument can be made for spending quite a bit more on this for no other reason than it would employ a lot of people during a down economy.

  28. 28.

    MR Bill

    March 26, 2009 at 10:45 am

    I know at least 3 guys with HIV and one cancer patient who say that marijuana, used sensibly, allows them to have a normal worklife, and stand the medication they have to take. I’ve had medical pain that it made bearable, and stayed off opiates (that mess with me, badly, anyway).
    I live not too far from a community in Georgia named "Hemp".
    Guess what they used to grow there?

  29. 29.

    The Other Steve

    March 26, 2009 at 10:45 am

    You have to wonder exactly how much of any money spent on rehab programs would be stimulative. After all, if there are a few sectors that are actually adding jobs overall, they are education, government, and health care. Perhaps an argument can be made for spending quite a bit more on this for no other reason than it would employ a lot of people during a down economy.

    you can easily argument that treatment programs are anti-stimulative.

    Primarily, reformed drug users are going to be demanding jobs. Do we really want more people competing in the job market today?

    Secondly, more pot smokers acts as a stimulus to the snack food industry. Not only do we get these people out of the job market, and since they’re high they don’t care. On top of that we sell more Cheetohs. It’s a win-win.

  30. 30.

    Cris

    March 26, 2009 at 10:59 am

    “We’re putting judges in the position to determine sentences based on the facts of a case, and not on mandatory minimum sentences,” said Jeffrion L. Aubry, an assemblyman from Queens who has led the effort for repeal.

    “To me, that is the restoration of justice.”

    As I said in an earlier thread, this is really the key. It’s really about restoring proper authority to the judiciary. Regardless of your opinion about drugs, this is simply a matter of letting our judges be judges.

  31. 31.

    Brian J

    March 26, 2009 at 11:06 am

    I live not too far from a community in Georgia named "Hemp".
    Guess what they used to grow there?

    Carrots?

    you can easily argument that treatment programs are anti-stimulative.

    Primarily, reformed drug users are going to be demanding jobs. Do we really want more people competing in the job market today?

    Secondly, more pot smokers acts as a stimulus to the snack food industry. Not only do we get these people out of the job market, and since they’re high they don’t care. On top of that we sell more Cheetohs. It’s a win-win.

    Heh. That’s sort of like the argument that Tina Fey made in 2004 when gay marriage bans were on the ballots in many states. She said if we were really looking for a way to stimulate the economy, we should allow them to do it, because they would hold the most lavish, over the top, expensive parties, which would help a lot of businesses out. At least one gay guy I know said that is absolutely correct.

  32. 32.

    Zifnab

    March 26, 2009 at 11:31 am

    @The Other Steve:

    you can easily argument that treatment programs are anti-stimulative.

    Not to mention, you’re taking away all the jobs from hard working prison guards and DEA officials.

    Hell, it’s a security risk. If the DEA guy isn’t busting down a drug dealer’s door, he could be wandering the streets waiting to bust down your door instead. If a prison guard isn’t in some supermax prison indulging his sadist fantasies on some 18-year-old perp, he could be attacking someone who doesn’t deserve it.

    The War on Drugs is probably the single most beneficial economic and social safety feature the United States has going for it. Without the WoD, there would be anarchy. Anarchy I tell you.

  33. 33.

    MR Bill

    March 26, 2009 at 11:37 am

    Carrots?

    BZZZZT!

    The correct answer is "corn", which they made into whisky, until the Revenooers shut them down.
    Their grandchildren went into growing marijuana, the psychoactive form of hemp, and the state and federal helicopters are flying as we type.

  34. 34.

    Dr Dave (a different one)

    March 26, 2009 at 11:39 am

    Two thoughts:

    I see an inherent conflict in the idea "Legalize it but regulate it." If there are regulations, then by definition there are also illegal uses that fall outside the regulations. Maybe my imagination is limited, but I can’t imagine a way to regulate the recreational use of some drugs (e.g. heroin) that wouldn’t create a black market for uses that fall outside the regulations. Not all drugs are equivalent in their physiological effects, and I think it is reasonable for society to distinguish between less harmful and more harmful drugs on the basis of real differences. Maybe it would work for marijuana (as a society we seem to be generally OK with alcohol, despite its substantial societal costs), but I am doubtful about most other "recreational" drugs.

    I also think the incarceration/treatment debate is a false dichotomy that short-sightedly ignores the possibility of investing money in research into and eventual implementaion of successful strategies for prevention of drug abuse and addiction. As is often the case, our society isn’t willing to spend money up front in order to produce desirable results in the long term, and I think the statistics show that by the time you reach the treatment stage it is often too late. Maybe better treatments are possible, but it’s still closing the barn door after the horse has bolted.

    Call me a pragmatist–I want to make policy based on results and not ideology. (I had enough of the latter during the last eight years.)

  35. 35.

    Ed in NJ

    March 26, 2009 at 1:14 pm

    The whole issue of prison vs. rehab is a false argument. As someone who worked in rehab as an undergrad who is now married to a therapist, I can tell you that the problem is evaluation, not sentencing. There is a big difference between dealers, recreational users, and addicts. Under the Rockefeller laws, the same punishment was handed down to all three if certain threshholds were met. Just switching from incarceration to forced rehab might save money, but won’t reduce drug use or recidivism.

  36. 36.

    Libby

    March 26, 2009 at 1:45 pm

    Glennzilla just did something about this and is giving a presentation on the successful decrim model used in Portugal. None of the horror stories that prohibs were telling came true and the results made a good argument for treating drug addiction as a public health problem v. a criminal one.

    The least successful and most expensive model is eradication/interdiction/incarceration. People are going to do drugs. Not all will get addicted. Most users pose harm to society. The only question is how to deal with addiction.

  37. 37.

    Libby

    March 26, 2009 at 1:45 pm

    That should have read most users pose NO harm to society.

  38. 38.

    TenguPhule

    March 26, 2009 at 1:55 pm

    Not all drugs are equivalent in their physiological effects, and I think it is reasonable for society to distinguish between less harmful and more harmful drugs on the basis of real differences. Maybe it would work for marijuana (as a society we seem to be generally OK with alcohol, despite its substantial societal costs), but I am doubtful about most other "recreational" drugs.

    Amen.

    For those who would like to legalize everything, please recall the opium dens in ye old San Franciso and China. Making it legal doesn’t mitigate the underlying problems.

  39. 39.

    J sub D

    March 26, 2009 at 2:07 pm

    As Promised, He Called Off the Medical Marijuana Raids—For a Week

    But, but, but …

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