COCAINE'S LEGAL HAZE

North Carolina's appellate judges will have a puzzle on their hands
until the General Assembly clarifies the laws on cocaine possession.
One law calls possession a misdemeanor, but another, later one makes
the crime more seriously a felony, regardless of the circumstances or
the amount possessed.

The obvious first step is to fix the confusion. What may lead to
unnecessary wrangling on Jones Street is how seriously possession of
cocaine ought to be punished.

In a reflexive law-and-order reaction, lawmakers may be tempted to
affirm a felony label for the offense and let that be that. Yet some
thought is called for, since possession as a felony can trigger much
longer prison sentences -- for instance, in the form of habitual felon
sanctions.

The fairness of such sentences is debatable, at best.

Such circumstances are precisely what brought the latest case to the
Court of Appeals. Corey Tyrone Sneed of Wilmington had three cocaine
possession convictions in the 1990s. Stopped for a traffic violation
last year, he was found to be driving with an illegal license plate
and a handgun.

Because of his cocaine-related felonies, Sneed was charged with the
offense of being a felon in possession of a handgun, and he was
sentenced as a habitual felon to 100 to 129 months in prison.

An appeals court panel overturned his conviction, citing the
conflicting laws. The court did the same in a case earlier this year,
but last week the state Supreme Court froze that decision, and will
study the matter.

Communities need drug laws that deal harshly with cocaine dealers, and
stiff penalties are reasonable for people arrested repeatedly for
possession. But for possession to be classed as a felony, irrespective
of the amount of the drug, seems excessive when it hasn't involved
violence or dealing.

Prison time in such cases is onerous for state taxpayers, too, with
the average cost of keeping a person in prison for a year roughly the
same as for a year at Harvard.

The question legislators need to answer is, what is the appropriate
penalty for basic cocaine possession. It seems that they had the right
idea the first time.