DETROIT Michigan legislators are considering changing the
nation's harshest drug law, which in 20 years has been used to send
240 people, most of them firsttime offenders, to prison for life
without possibility of parole.

The leader of the reform effort, Republican state Sen. William Van
Regenmorter, one of the state's most conservative senators, has
complained that drug offenders occupy so many cells in the state's
prisons that there is no room for more serious criminals.

``I hope this is seen as neither soft nor tough but smart,'' says
Van Regenmorter. ``I don't want to spend cell space on these people
for 40 or 50 years at $50,000 a year when we haven't got room for
child torturers.''

His uphill fight to ease the sentence for just one drug law reveals
much about the politics of drugs today. Van Regenmorter's effort is
similar to attempts to change the federal crack cocaine law, which
critics say is racist because it punishes users of crack cocaine far
more severely than users of powder cocaine. Ninetythree percent of
crack defendants are black.

The Michigan law, enacted in 1978, imposes a mandatory life sentence
without parole on anyone convicted of possessing 650 grams or more of
cocaine or heroin with the intent to sell. That amount 1.4 pounds
is worth $10,000 to $20,000. In Michigan, only persons convicted
of firstdegree murder receive the same sentence.

The law was aimed at drug kingpins, but even its original supporters
agree it hasn't worked that way. The biggest dealers are tried in
federal court. Eightysix percent of those convicted under Michigan's
``650 lifer'' law, as it's known, have never been to prison before.

``The law wasn't used the way it was supposed to be,'' says Paul
Rosenbaum, a former legislator who was the law's original Democratic
sponsor. ``Prosecutors were supposed to be selective and reserve it
only for the big fish. Instead, it's been applied arbitrarily. It's
time for a change.''

His Republican cosponsor, William Bryan, agrees the law was a
mistake and, before recently retiring from politics, he introduced
bills to amend the law. They, however, went nowhere, not even
receiving a hearing.

Van Regenmorter, the chairman of the Michigan Senate Judiciary
Committee, supported the law until he held a series of hearings this
year. Rather than confirming that the law was working, the hearings
changed his mind.

Van Regenmorter thinks there is a 55% to 45% chance the law will be
amended this year. He says that most legislators privately agree the
law should be changed but they fear that softening any drug law could
be used against them in a campaign.

``It's difficult to do anything on such an issue,'' Van Regenmorter
says. ``I'm somewhat protected because of my reputation on crime.''
He expects a vote by year's end.

Van Regenmorter has proposed amending the law to allow a convicted
drug offender to become eligible for parole after serving 15 years in
prison, but only if the prosecutor agreed and the defendant
cooperated. That provision, though, has caused some activists to
withdraw support from the bill. They say that judges, not
prosecutors, should have the power to lower sentences and that many
defendants are lowlevel offenders without valuable information to
offer prosecutors.

``We appreciate that the senator opened the debate, but we can't
support the law as it's written,'' says Laura Sager, head of Families
Against Mandatory Minimums in Michigan.

``What about the people who don't know anything? People like me,''
said Gary Fannon, a first offender who served ten years under the law
before getting his conviction overturned on appeal, on an unrelated
issue. ``This law is not working. It wasted ten years of my life and
we need to admit it.''

Since the trend to tougher drug laws began in the late 1970s, only
two states have reduced drug penalties: Georgia and Texas.

In Georgia, where a second conviction for drug distribution could
bring a life sentence without parole, ``experience showed an
embarrassing racial disparity,'' says defense lawyer Jack Martin, who
fought to change the law. Of 375 defendants sentenced under the law,
369 were black. Of 167 whites who could have been given life without
parole, only one got the sentence. The Georgia legislature repealed
the law in 1996.

Texas rewrote its criminal laws in 1993 in a way that softened drug
sentences and toughened penalties for violent crimes. It created
special jails for drug offenders, reduced their sentences and
mandated probation for most firsttime drug offenders.

President Clinton has recommended easing the federal sentences for
crack possession and toughening them for powder cocaine possession
with intent to distribute. The discrepancy has inspired charges of
racial inequities. Now, having five grams of crack cocaine draws a
mandatory sentence of five years without parole. It takes 500 grams
of powder cocaine to get the same sentence. Clinton's plan would
narrow the inequity but not eliminate it, so that possession of 25
grams of crack cocaine or 250 grams of powder cocaine would mean a
fiveyear sentence.

The proposal has received a cool reception from Senate Republicans, who
say easing

any drug law sends the wrong message.

[Copyright 1997, Dialog]