DRUG SENTENCING UNFAIR

Re: "The Drug, Not Its Form - Time for Congress to fix cocaine-crack
disparity," Wednesday Editorials.

Your position on racial disparity in sentencing is exactly right. The
vast difference in crack and powder cocaine sentences is only one of
the reasons for the excessive incarceration of black Americans, but it
is starkly unfair.

The latest Center for Disease Control survey, covering 1999-2002,
reported that 23.5 percent of white adults had ever used street drugs
(excluding marijuana) while only 18 percent of black adults had.

Yet blacks are arrested and prosecuted for drug law violations far
more often than are whites. According to the Texas Department of
Criminal Justice in August 2004, 8 percent of Texas prisoners held for
drug law violations were white; 50 percent were black. Only about 11.5
percent of Texans are black.

It is impossible to exaggerate the negative effects of mass
incarceration on the black community. It is a G.I. Bill in reverse,
creating enormous social regression by stigmatizing and brutalizing
millions of young people, removing them from higher education and the
workforce and orphaning their children.

Suzanne Wills, Drug Policy Forum of Texas, Dallas