The Pennsylvania Commission on Sentencing proposed last week the removal of a law that doubles the sentences for drug dealers when incidents occur within 1,000 feet of a school zone. This would remove legislation that is ill-fit in State College.

The current law is one that may be effective in Pennsylvania's larger cities, but college towns like State College exemplify how the law can fall short.

With the 1,000-foot buffer zone portion of the law, much of downtown State College, with its proximity to university buildings, would fall under the doubled sentence requirement for drug activity. It is important to keep drugs out of any community setting, but punishing a convicted drug dealer for being near a college campus is a much different situation than with a dealer who operates near an elementary school -- and should come with a different sentence.

It seems the law is intended to keep drugs out of the hands of elementary school-aged children, which is not relevant when dealing with students at Penn State considering how much geography falls under the university's buffer zone.

The law should be removed because it fails to recognize the differences between areas surrounding, say, a middle school and a large university.

Centre County prosecutor Michael Madeira said the law is a good one, but his reasoning seems flawed. Madeira said the mandatory sentencing guidelines set up by the school-zone sentencing law allow court procedures to run more efficiently.

However, this should not be the reason behind why laws exist. This particular law should be enforced to keep drugs out of school zones and out of the hands of children, not as a way to expedite the legal process around a university. Because the current law carries with it a minimum two-year sentence, the standard minimum penalty makes for a quicker trial, but not necessarily proper sentencing.

Therefore, the law seems ill suited for our smaller community revolving around a big university.

The fact that the law helps streamline the legal process should only come as an additional benefit in communities already benefiting from the true purpose of a school zone law. When a side effect becomes the main benefit of a law, something is wrong.