Pubdate: Tue, 10 Jul 2007
Source: San Francisco Chronicle (CA)
Page: C - 11
Copyright: 2007 Hearst Communications Inc.
Contact:  http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/388
Author: Debra J. Saunders
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?199 (Mandatory Minimum Sentencing)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/racial.htm (Racial Issues)

HEAVY TIME FOR DRUG LIGHTWEIGHTS

WHEN Congress passed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, it wrongly 
included language that meted out a mandatory minimum sentence of five 
years for dealing 5 grams of crack cocaine, yet the same 5-year 
mandatory minimum sentence for dealing 100 times that amount, or 500 
grams, of powder cocaine. Thus, the bill codified a racially unjust 
divide. The U.S. Sentencing Commission found that in 2000 some 84.7 
percent of federal crack offenders were black, while only 5.6 percent 
were white.

Everyone in Washington knows that the law is unfair -- obscenely 
unfair. The U.S. Sentencing Commission has made four recommendations 
to curb the sentencing inequity. Alas, for the past two decades, 
Democrats and Republicans have cravenly set out to out-posture each 
other in toughness in the war on drugs. So Congress either voted 
against or ignored the Sentencing Commission's recommendations.

Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., may be about to change the status quo. For 
the past couple of years, Washington's idea of reform has been to 
fiddle with the concept of reducing the 100-to-1 crack/powder 
sentencing disparity to 20-to-1. Last month, Biden made the brave 
leap of proposing a bill to eliminate the sentencing disparity 
completely, instead of making the law unfair, but less so.

As Biden wrote in a statement announcing his Drug Sentencing Reform & 
Cocaine Kingpin Trafficking Act of 2007, the law needs to be changed 
because "powder cocaine offenders who traffic 500 grams of powder 
(2,500-5,000 doses) receive the same 5-year mandatory minimum 
sentence as crack cocaine offenders who posses just 5 grams of crack 
(10-50 doses)." Biden's bill would raise the amount of crack cocaine 
so that 500 grams of either crack or powder cocaine would trigger the 
same mandatory minimum sentence.

Biden also included the Sentencing Commission recommendation to 
eliminate the mandatory minimum sentence for simple possession of 5 
grams or more of crack, as crack is the only drug to mandate a prison 
sentence for possession alone. While supporters might argue that the 
possession penalty is tough on drugs, the Sentencing Commission 
pointed out how weak the crack possession penalty actually is: "an 
offender who simply possesses5 grams of crack cocaine receives the 
same 5-year mandatory minimum penalty as a trafficker of other drugs."

The ACLU is supportive. A statement lauded Biden's bill as a 
"long-awaited fix to discriminatory federal drug sentencing."

But Eric Sterling of the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation is less 
enthusiastic. "Most of my friends are a little embarrassed that I'm 
not jumping up and down with them saying, 'This is what we've been 
working for.' "

While Sterling would like to see the 100-to-1 discrepancy end, he 
believes that Congress needs to overhaul drug laws so that they 
concentrate on kingpins, not low-level offenders.

"There shouldn't be any crack cases in federal court, as a general 
matter," Sterling argued, "because crack is a purely retail 
phenomenon. The trafficking is in powder cocaine."

The irony is that most Americans think that federal mandatory minimum 
sentences -- with extra harsh penalties for crack dealers -- are 
tough on drug lords, when in fact, the systems goes easy on kingpins.

Sterling directed me to a Sentencing Commission fact table on 2006 
federal cocaine cases. The median crack offense involved 51 grams of 
crack -- or 100 to 500 doses. The median powder cocaine offender 
weight was 6,000 grams, about the amount of cocaine that would fill a 
briefcase. Not exactly your major haul.

Not only do these weights suggest that most federal offenders were 
not kingpins, but worse, the statistics also show that more than half 
of federal cocaine cases were crack cases -- dealing as little as 2.3 
grams. One-third of crack cases involved 25 grams or less.

Drug kingpins should love the status quo.

Passage of the Biden bill would present a welcome change in 
disparity-heavy drug laws. The goal should be laws with heavy 
consequences for drug-trade heavyweights, instead of hefty sentences 
for lightweights.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom