Bill Clinton commuted a handful of convictions for low-level drug offenders, which was better late than never, but his pardon for a commodities trader, who fled the country, was a betrayal of trust.

For those who have been fighting for more sensible drug policies, Bill Clinton's last-minute decision to commute the sentences of a handful of low-level drug offenders, coupled with his vocal criticism of the nation's punitive approach to drugs, came better late than never. But Clinton's public conversion in his last days as president is also a tragic tale of lost opportunities.

In the November issue of Rolling Stone, Clinton came forward to condemn myriad aspects of the nation's drug policies, from mandatory minimum sentences to the disparity in sentencing for crack and powdered cocaine. "There are tons of people in prison who are nonviolent offenders who have drug-related charges . . . and too many of them are getting out . . . without treatment, without education, without skills, without serious effort at job placement," Clinton said.

So true. But where was this concern during the last eight years, when he was in a position to do something about it? This kind of pragmatic liberalism is what put him in office. But rather than deliver sentencing reform and universal diversion programs for non-violent drug offenders, Clinton presided over an era in which America's incarcerated population ballooned to 2-million people, prisons became places with fewer rehabilitative opportunities and wide differences in sentencing for crack and powdered cocaine remained on the books.

In his final weeks in office, Clinton commuted the sentences of about 15 people who had been convicted of low-level, non-violent drug offenses. These included Dorothy Gaines and Kemba Smith, two women who were on the bottom rung of the drug trade but who had been punished as though they were kingpins. Gaines was sentenced to 19 years in prison, Smith to 24 years, both for playing largely peripheral roles in their boyfriends' drug trades. Donald Clark, formerly of the Myakka City area, was granted clemency in Clinton's last hours in office. Clark, a watermelon and sod farmer who had been convicted of growing marijuana once before, was serving a 27-year sentence for conspiracy charges arising out of the same conduct for which he had already been punished. Because he refused a plea bargain, he was the only "conspirator" to receive such an excessive sentence.

But thousands of non-violent offenders remain imprisoned under similar circumstances. Clinton left office without granting the requests of more than 1,000 prisoners with pending commutation requests. Many were on behalf of non-violent offenders in abusively long sentences as a result of draconian drug laws. Tens of thousands of similar cases never got as far as a commutation process. These are the non-violent drug offenders who don't have the attorney power, political connections, resources or public interest group pressure behind them to agitate for their release.

Clemency is a powerful tool that, when used responsibly, can right an injustice. Clinton could have used it throughout his term to make a larger stand against the oppressive impact of our drug laws. Instead, Clinton waited until the last minute, when the political danger was nil, to toss drug law reform advocates a bone.

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