
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, October 31, 1995                   TAG: 9510310101
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

CLINTON SIGNS LAW KEEPING STIFF CRACK PENALTIES

President Clinton signed a law Monday retaining harsher penalties for crack cocaine than its more expensive, powdered form, pleasing police but angering critics who said he sacrificed black, poor people to appear tough on crime.

The law keeps a five-year minimum sentence for possessing 5 grams of crack - a cheap and smokable form of cocaine - and a minimum 10 months' probation for possessing the same amount of powdered cocaine.

The majority of those caught holding crack are black and poor. Those caught with powdered cocaine are mostly white and more affluent.

The Sentencing Commission recommended in June that the penalties be equalized, a recommendation that would have taken effect automatically Wednesday.

However, Congress stepped in and approved legislation preserving the tough sentences, and Clinton signed that bill Monday.

The measure's passage was considered a factor in a recent spate of uprisings at federal prisons in Alabama, Illinois, Pennsylvania and Tennessee that led the Justice Department to order an indefinite lockdown at all federal prisons.

Clinton said he signed the bill to send a message that ``the penalties for dealing drugs are severe.'' The tougher sentences are necessary, Clinton argued, because crack carries with it so many devastating social ills. Crack is considered more addictive than powder and gives a quick, intense high.

``I am not going to let anyone who peddles drugs get the idea that the cost of doing business is going down,'' Clinton said. He directed the U.S. Sentencing Commission to undertake additional review of the sentencing issues and report new recommendations.

Law enforcement groups praised Clinton's support of the tough sentences.

``This was a difficult course of action for the president, and one fraught with political hazards,'' said Gilbert Gallegos, national president of the 270,000-member Fraternal Order of Police.

Civil rights activists, however, said it reflected Clinton's lack of will to carry out his own plea for racial unity. He made that appeal after O.J. Simpson's acquittal on murder charges revealed that blacks and whites in general had dramatically different views of the criminal justice system.

``I'm profoundly disappointed,'' said Wade Henderson, NAACP Washington bureau director.

by CNB