COLUMN OVERSTATES PENALTY FOR CRACK COCAINE USE

The Writer Is First Assistant U.S. Attorney, Western District Of North
Carolina. This Letter Expresses His Personal Opinions Only.

To the editor:

In response to "Why is Bush dodging questions about cocaine?" (Aug. 29
Viewpoint):

Ed Williams states that if George W. Bush admits to using cocaine "he
did something that has landed a lot of his fellow Americans in prison
for a long time," in fact for a mandatory minimum term of five years.
That is not true.

First, Mr. Williams incorrectly interchanges "cocaine" and "crack,"
cocaine's more destructive and more harshly punished form. Although it
is a crime to possess crack cocaine, Mr. Williams will be hard pressed
to find prison inmates prosecuted in the Western District of North
Carolina, or probably any other federal prosecutorial district, for
mere possession of crack.

It is a myth, an often-invoked straw man, that the prisons are full of
mere drug users. Some drug dealers in prison for distribution and
possession with intent to distribute are drug users; they are not
incarcerated for drug use or possession.

To assert that the rumored violation of a rarely prosecuted federal
law by George W. Bush more than five times beyond the five-year
statute of limitations calls into question the wisdom of our drug laws
is to say that the allegation of rape against President Clinton 25
years ago calls into question the propriety of the sexual offender
laws. We are incessantly counseled to move beyond Clinton's distant
(and recent) transgressions. Why is the standard different for a
Republican candidate than for a Democratic president?

KENNETH D. BELL
Charlotte
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BUSH COULD TAKE LESSON FROM SENATOR SAM

To the editor:

Perhaps Mr. Bush could use a quote from our late Sen. Sam Ervin: "All of my
indiscretions have passed the statute of limitations."

JOE FRANZLE
Charlotte