CRACK VS POWDER COCAINE BATTLE

The NAACP is pleased that incremental steps are being implemented to
correct one of the most egregious disparities in the nation's drug
enforcement policies.

For more than 20 years mandatory sentencing guidelines and
differences in crack and powder cocaine penalties in America's courts
have disproportionately impacted African American and other minority
defendants.

But now, due to actions taken by the U.S. Sentencing Commission
(USSC) last May that took effect Nov. 1, the mandatory minimum
penalties for crack cocaine conviction have been lowered, which may
impact as many as 3,500 federal defendants a year.

"The NAACP has long supported a reduction in crack cocaine penalties
and a repeal of mandatory minimum sentences for such offenses," said
NAACP Interim President & CEO Dennis Courtland Hayes. "On average,
this change will reduce the penalty on defendants' sentences by 15
months. While this change is not all that we have been advocating
for, it is an important first step."

The result of a 1986 federal law has been a huge, 100 to 1 disparity
between the penalty for possession of crack cocaine and powder
cocaine. Specifically, a person has to possess 500 grams of powder
cocaine before they are subject to the same mandatory prison sentence
(5 years) as an individual convicted of possessing 5 grams of crack
cocaine, despite the fact that the pharmacologically of the two
illegal narcotics are identical.

Another effect of the 1986 law is that small-scale crack cocaine
users are punished much more severely than powder cocaine users and
their suppliers. Despite the fact that cocaine use is roughly equal
among the different populations in the U.S., the vast majority of
offenders tried, convicted and sentenced under federal crack cocaine
mandatory minimum sentences are African Americans.

While the USSC decision does not impact the 100-to-1 crack / powder
cocaine sentencing disparity, it does ensure that people convicted of
crack cocaine possession under federal law are not sentenced even
more harshly. The USSC in now in the process of determining if their
action should be retroactive, a move the NAACP fully supports.

"Making the provision retroactive would help approximately 19,500
people currently in prison for a federal crack cocaine conviction,
approximately 86 percent of whom are African American," NAACP
Washington Bureau Director Hilary Shelton said in testimony before
the commission earlier this week. "It only makes sense that a person
sentenced between Oct. 1, 1991 and June 30, 2007 should not have to
spend more time in prison than those sentenced after November 1,
2007, simply because they had the misfortune of being sentenced at
the wrong time."

Failure to apply the sentencing measure retroactively-which was done
in the past for LSD, marijuana and oxycodone that benefited other
racial groups more so than African Americans - would further
perpetuate and perhaps intensify the injustice around this issue,
Shelton added.