ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, December 30, 1996 TAG: 9612300090
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
IT'S TIME to overturn a 1988 law, introduced by Sen. Jesse Helms and passed without hearings, that established super-severe mandatory sentences for possession of crack cocaine.
As Los Angeles writer Robert Scheer has observed, under this law "a dealer caught carrying 499 grams of cocaine powder can be treated lightly, but someone who buys 5 grams from that dealer, puts it into a microwave with baking soda and water and cooks it into crack is banished to a federal prison for five years without possibility of parole."
The rationale for this disparity has been the presumed differences in the two drugs' pharmacological properties. Crack was supposed to be more addictive, thus more likely to prompt users to commit crimes to feed their addictions.
But, according to a recent, in-depth study reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association, crack is not fundamentally different in its impact from other forms of cocaine.
The biggest disparity seems to lie, rather, in the types of people who use the two kinds of cocaine, and in the sentences they get when they're caught. Crack, which is cheaper, is more common in poorer and minority neighborhoods.
It happens that 90 percent of drug offenders sentenced for crack offenses are black, while most powdered cocaine users are white.
With one in five federal prison cells occupied by small-time drug offenders in a massively failed war on drugs, it's time to reform these unfair - and racist - sentencing policies.
LENGTH: Short : 35 linesby CNB