Changing Colorado's drug sentencing laws to encourage treatment
over incarceration for low-level users is an enlightened way to
take on the destructive force of addiction.  We hope the
Colorado legislature passes a bill that would broadly revise the
state's drug sentencing structure.  But it isn't just the
content of this bill that is notable, so too how it was created.
This was not a piece of legislation crafted by an interest group
behind closed doors and delivered to a lawmaker who had only a
passing knowledge of its content. It was the product of what has
turned out to be years of discussion and negotiation among
experts in criminal law and drug abuse.  Defense lawyers,
prosecutors, cops and counselors all were represented on a
Colorado Commission on Criminal & Juvenile Justice committee
that hashed out the complex bill.  In an era when some
politicians think the only way they can get the job done is by
shutting out the other side and pushing through proposals that
cater to an extreme position — and ther