By Tad Vezner

St. Paul Pioneer Press

ST. PAUL — A bill that would substantially revise the state’s drug laws for the first time in nearly three decades sailed through its first legislative hearing Monday.

The bill, sponsored by Senate judiciary committee chair Ron Latz, DFL-St. Louis Park, represents a compromise between law enforcement, defense attorneys and some lawmakers, worked out in private talks over the past several weeks.

Monday’s hearing by the Senate judiciary committee was the first time that compromise received formal feedback at the Legislature; it passed unanimously Monday out of the Senate’s judiciary committee to the finance committee.

Late last year, a state commission’s plan to lighten drug penalties was met with serious pushback by county prosecutors, who took issue with any leniency offered to the most serious first-degree offenders. An effort started at the Legislature to revamp the plan — something that could happen only if both houses pass the legislation and the governor signs it.

Critics of Minnesota’s current drug laws — including many in law enforcement — say they treat common users like hardened criminals and jail them for years instead of focusing on treatment.

The proposed compromise would in general lower the sentencing guidelines — the amount of prison time a convicted criminal would be presumed to get when sentenced by a judge — for drug crimes. The sentence for first-degree sales and possession, for example, would drop from just over seven years to five and a half years.

But “Kingpin dealers” — those possessing or selling especially large quantities of drugs — would face mandatory sentences, unalterable by a judge. Mandatory sentences would be eliminated for most lesser-degree drug crimes, allowing judges to be more lenient.

The compromise would raise the threshold of confiscated drugs required to trigger a charge, with the exception of marijuana — that threshold is already extraordinarily high, compared with other states — and heroine, which prosecutors consider particularly addictive and deadly.

In the House, Rep. Tony Cornish, R-Vernon Center, who chairs the House’s public safety committee, also said he supports the agreement.

—Distributed by Tribune Content Agency.