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Since the Rockefeller Drug Laws were passed in 1973 under Governor Nelson Rockefeller, New York State has had the harshest sentencing for low-level, non-violent drug offenders of any other state in the nation. Under these laws, those convicted of drug offenses face the same penalties as those convicted of murder, and harsher penalties that those convicted of rape. (Sullum, 1) Though the laws were first enacted to curb the late-1960s-early-1970s psychedelic drug epidemic, New York's drug problem in fact worsened in the 1980s with the use of stimulants, and thus the laws were reformed to be less lenient. These unforgiving laws, which place enormous minimum sentences for drug-sale convictions, prove to be ineffective and expensive and have been criticized as being unfair and unnecessary. The laws have since been reformed under New York Governor George Pataki in 2004, but the changes made were negligible and leave many of the Rockefeller laws' most severe features untouched.......

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Approximate Word Count: 1733
Approximate Pages: 7 (250 words per double-spaced page)

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