Pubdate: Mon, 05 Mar 2007
Source: Daytona Beach News-Journal (FL)
Copyright: 2007 News-Journal Corporation
Contact:  http://www.news-journalonline.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/700
Note: gives priority to local writers
Author: Lyda Longa, Staff Writer
Note: gives priority to local writers
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine)
Bookmark: 
http://www.mapinc.org/racial.htm (Racial Issues)

CRACKED JUSTICE

Absurd, Racist Disparities In Drug Sentencing

Cocaine is a fine white powder that, when injected, inhaled or 
smoked, causes a euphoric high for about 30 minutes.

A 25 to 150 milligram dose usually produces the desired effect.

The street price of cocaine, after its high of $500 per gram in the 
early 1980s, has fluctuated between $120 and $190 per gram for the 
last dozen years, so one "hit" of powder cocaine costs the user 
between $3 and $28, depending on dosage and purity.

Crack is a cocaine spinoff.

Cocaine is "cooked" with ammonia or baking soda and water to separate 
the powder's salts from its purer cocaine "base." Little rocks are 
created that can then be smoked.

As the rocks are smoked, they make the tiny crackling sound that 
gives the drug its nickname. It takes about one gram of powder 
cocaine to produce a 900 milligram rock of crack.

The rock usually is broken into smaller pieces. A 100 milligram rock, 
which costs from $10 to $25, can produce one, maybe two good 
inhalations. When smoked, it produces a much faster, more intense 
high than when using cocaine, because it goes straight into the lungs.

But the high is much briefer, too -- five, 10 minutes, tops. Crack 
became popular in the 1980s because of its rapid effects and its 
illusion of cheapness.

In fact, taking the midrange street-price, the same amount of crack 
is slightly more expensive than an equal amount of cocaine, and 
produces one-third the length of the high. Only the intensity is in 
crack's favor.

Those details are relevant because they help illuminate, but not 
explain, the federal government's senseless, racist laws regarding 
cocaine and crack users.

A user arrested and convicted for possessing at least 500 grams of 
cocaine will face an automatic five-year prison sentence. For a crack 
user, the automatic five-year sentence is triggered from possession 
of just 5 grams of crack. (The average crack-related federal sentence 
is actually just under 11 years -- longer than the 79-month average 
federal sentence for rape.) Why the disparity?

Here's another illuminating fact: As of 2002, 64 percent of crack 
users were black or Hispanic. Just 34 percent were white.

Among powder cocaine users, just 33 percent were black, 16 percent 
Hispanic, and 48 percent white.

The race-based disparity could not be more obvious when it comes to 
sentencing. But so go the inanities of the "war on drugs." They make 
you wonder who's really high on what.

Senseless crack and cocaine federal sentencing guidelines date back 
to 1986, following several years of press and politicians 
sensationalizing a crack "epidemic." There were stories of "crack 
babies" born to mothers abusing the drug (babies born to 
drug-addicted mothers always have been a problem, but the effects of 
poverty, malnutrition, alcohol and tobacco smoking during pregnancy 
exert a far greater medical and social toll on babies than crack). 
There were tales of crack's wildly addictive nature.

There still are, as federal government propaganda claims crack 
deserves stricter punishment because it's more addictive than cocaine.

Yet the National Institute on Drug Abuse, a federal agency, puts the 
number of crack users (not addicts) at about 567,000, and the number 
of cocaine users at almost four times that. Crack or cocaine 
addiction among high school students is negligible. Still, the 
hysteria carries on, with occasional reality checks.

In 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court declared federal sentencing 
guidelines unconstitutional. The mandatory version of the guidelines 
had a devastating effect on first-time drug offenders.

 From 2005 on, the guidelines only could be used on an advisory basis.

Killed, too, was the so-called Feeney Amendment -- a draconian 
measure by U.S. Rep. Tom Feeney, R-Orlando, that forbade judges from 
reducing sentences in some cases. But the Supreme Court did not 
address the disparity between crack and powder cocaine sentences.

Nor did it eliminate still pernicious segments of the Feeney 
Amendment, including a requirement that judges' sentences, 
accompanied by judges' names, be reported to Congress and the 
Attorney General, thus opening the door to intimidation of the judiciary.

On all these counts, Congress has corrective work to do -- both to 
fix an unjust disparity and an unjust sentencing law, and to dispel 
the kind of drug-war myths that perpetuate the absurd.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom