This article analyzes local debates around the enactment of New York's 1973 Rockefeller Drug Laws, which marked a watershed moment in the turn towards punitive drug policy. This history contributes to a growing body of literature that has challenged and complicated the traditional backlash narrative of "law and order." Governor Nelson Rockefeller did not root his campaign for harsh new drug laws in the politics of white racial backlash. Instead, he championed the laws by publicizing their endorsement by several African American community leaders from Harlem. This article argues that historians must take seriously Americans' perceived threats to security and safety in order to better understand the public's embrace of punitive politics in the later twentieth century. More attention to the ways local community leaders debated and promoted crime policy better informs our understanding of the punitive turn and the formation of a bipartisan legislative effort responsible for the War on Drugs.

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