ALBANY—As we figured the other day, any reforms to the Rockefeller drug laws will be addressed by the State Senate as part of the budget, and not before.
“It became clear in our discussions that this is as much a budgetary and economic issue as it is a sentencing issue,” Majority Leader Malcolm Smith said in a statement issued this morning. “At the conference, our members raised a number of issues and concerns that must be taken into consideration, specifically the importance of investing new economic development resources into the communities that currently house the potentially thousands of non-violent offenders who would instead enter drug treatment facilities under proposed Rockefeller Drug Law reform.”
A restructuring of the law passed the State Assembly Wednesday night, and state senators held a long conference on the issue that evening.
