FEDERAL DRUG LAW IS RACIST

Madison Urban Ministry and other groups working to raise awareness of
and fight racism are to be applauded for their efforts.

However, there is a general failure to recognize and address one area
in which racism continues to be both institutionalized and pervasive:
the criminal justice system and the war on drugs.

Just over a decade ago, in the wake of the death of NCAA basketball
star Len Bias, Congress - obsessed with proving to a gullible public
just how tough on (some) crime it could be - enacted the sentencing
guidelines and legislation mandating minimum prison sentences for
people convicted in federal court of drug offenses.

Known as the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, the legislation was
expedited through Congress, which did not even have the customary
committee report analyzing the act's major provisions. The guidelines
and statutes, passed with appallingly little thought or analysis,
punish crack cocaine offenses 100 times more severely than powder
cocaine offenses.

A person convicted of an offense involving a mere 5 grams of crack
cocaine (less than one-fifth the weight of a 1-ounce letter) is
subject to a five-year minimum mandatory prison sentence. A person
convicted of an offense involving powder cocaine, however, is not
subject to the same mandatory minimum unless the offense involves 500
grams - 100 times more than is required for crack cocaine. A
conviction involving 50 grams of crack cocaine man-dates a 10-year
mandatory minimum prison sentence. It takes 5,000 grams of powder
cocaine to mandate the same sentence.

Guess which segment of the population uses crack cocaine and which
uses powder cocaine?

According to a report prepared by the U. S. Sentencing Commission in
February 1995, blacks comprised 88.3 percent of those convicted in
federal court in 1993 for crack cocaine distribution. A mere 4.1
percent involved whites. In powder cocaine cases, 32 percent of the
defendants were white, and 27.4 percent were black.

The distinction between penalties for crack and for powder is
rationalized on the grounds that crack cocaine is more highly
addictive. But, in fact, different forms of cocaine have the same
physiological or psychotropic effects. The difference is that crack
cocaine, which can be smoked, is more quickly absorbed into the
bloodstream.

Because of the huge disparity in the mandatory minimum prison
sentences applicable to crack cocaine and powder cocaine, low-level
street dealers of crack cocaine (usually black) routinely receive
longer sentences than kingpin dealers of powder cocaine from whom they
might buy.

Crack cocaine is made from powder cocaine, and it is not uncommon for
small-time dealers of crack to make that crack from powder cocaine by
mixing the powder with baking soda and cooking it in a microwave oven.
A dealer of powder can thus sell to dozens of individuals who convert
powder to crack, and the dealer of powder will get no longer a
sentence than any of the others.

According to the February 1995 Special Re-port to the Congress, a
person can distribute 500 grams of powder cocaine to 89 different
people who, if they convert it to crack, will all be subject to the
same five-year mandatory minimum prison sentence to which the dealer
himself is subject.

African-Americans continue to be treated most harshly by our drug
laws. It is time for people opposed to racism to stand up and demand
an end to the harsh mandatory minimum prison sentences and the unfair
disparity in the penalties for crack cocaine and powder cocaine.