DRUG JUSTICE

SENS. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., and Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, are not soft on
crime. Quite the contrary. So it's significant that they are proposing to
narrow the longstanding discrepancies in penalties for powder and crack
cocaine offenses, which liberals have complained about for years.

"Based on our experience," the far harsher penalities for crack cannot be
justified, "do not make sense . . . and are not rational," Sen. Sessions
said back in May.

Someone busted for selling 5 grams of crack cocaine now faces the same
mandatory five years in prison as someone convicted of selling 500 grams of
powder cocaine. Selling 50 grams of crack brings a mandatory 10 years, the
same as someone who has sold 5 kilos of powder cocaine.

Besides being irrational, this approach is discriminatory in its impact,
falling harshly on African Americans. Eighty-four percent of those
convicted of crack offenses in fiscal 2000 were black.

It's true that Congress justified the stiffer crack penalities in 1998 when
members heard primarily from African Americans about how crack addicts and
sellers were taking over their neighborhoods.

It's also true that the problem seems to have subsided since then. So some
probably will conclude that the law has worked and was justified. But the
reason for crack's decline probably is because people have changed their
drug of choice due to crack's devastating effects. Further, as the U. S.
Sentencing Commission has reported, the law has not achieved the original
intention.

Rather than kingpins, two-thirds of those imprisoned for crack offenses
have been "low-level" street dealers.

S1874, co-sponsored by Sens. Sessions and Hatch, would recognize these
truths and raise, to 20 grams from 5 grams, the amount of crack that would
trigger a mandatory five years. The Sentencing Commission has recommended a
25-grams trigger.

S1874 is stuck in the legislative process, but may eventually emerge
attached to some unrelated bill.

But whether Congress passes it, adopts the Sentencing Commission's
recommendation or does something really unlikely, such as adopting a
100-grams trigger, an even better idea would be to change the very nature
of mandatory sentences.

As the advocacy group Families Against Mandatory Minimums urges, mandatory
sentences "should be based on the role of the offender, not solely on the
weight of the drugs involved."

This approach would be not only more just, but more economical. Current law
hasn't succeeded in rounding up major traffickers, but it is costing
taxpayers between $25,000 and $30,000 a year to imprison each of the small
fry it has netted.

The cocaine penalities are overdue for an overhaul. With two leading
conservatives now joining longtime proponents of change, the prospects seem
brighter than ever.