CRACK VS. COCAINE

Drug War Has Been Harder On Blacks, Says Clarence Page

Twenty years have passed since the cocaine-induced death of
basketball wizard Len Bias touched off a war on drugs. His legacy, in
the odd way that politics play out, is harsher penalties for crack
cocaine, which is not quite the same drug that Mr. Bias used.

On June 19, 1986, two nights after the Boston Celtics selected him as
the No. 2 pick in the NBA draft, Mr. Bias died of a cocaine overdose.
He was 22 and appeared to be destined for greatness.

Many were comparing the 6-foot-8-inch University of Maryland
basketball star to another young prospect, Michael Jordan.

Grief was particularly pronounced in Boston, where Celtics fans hoped
Mr. Bias would team up with future Hall of Famer Larry Bird for a few
years, then take leadership of the franchise.

"All anybody in Boston is talking about is Len Bias," said then-House
Speaker Tip O'Neill of Massachusetts, according to Smoke and Mirrors,
The War on Drugs and the Politics of Failure, by Dan Baum, a former
Wall Street Journal reporter. "They want blood. If we move fast
enough, we can get out in front of the White House."

In early July, Democrat O'Neill ordered his party's leadership to
write anti-drug legislation. Soon, President Ronald Reagan and first
lady Nancy Reagan would issue a personal appeal on national
television for a "crusade" against drugs.

Black leaders shared the outrage. Bill Cosby, voicing an indignation
that would make headlines two decades later, joined the Rev. Jesse
Jackson on a Chicago stage to call for federal and citizen action.
"For too long, we've been blaming other people," said Mr. Cosby,
according to the Chicago Tribune. "In order to clean up the drug
problem, we have to re-evaluate who we are. We've got to take charge."

Among other measures, Mr. Jackson called for increased use of
military force along the nation's borders to fight the drug trade and
broader search-and-seizure freedoms for undercover narcotics police.

He got his wish, although not in the way he wanted it. A decade
later, at the Million Man March in Washington, D.C., Mr. Jackson
would decry the discrepancy between powder and crack cocaine
penalties that was putting black men in long-term prison sentences at
a rate much higher than whites.

Curiously, the law and public outrage were targeted most strongly
against crack cocaine. Mr. Bias, it turned out, had died from powder
cocaine. Yet, many people still believe incorrectly that he died from
crack, so great was the media frenzy about the cheap, highly
addictive form of cocaine.

The 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act contained new mandatory minimum
sentences, a death penalty provision for drug "kingpins" and no
parole for even minor, first-time-possession offenses. Five grams of
crack carried a minimum five-year federal prison sentence, which
would require at least 500 grams of powder cocaine.

This was justified, many believed, because crack was associated with
violent crimes and ruined lives in poor neighborhoods.

Yet, the U.S. Sentencing Commission, created by Congress in 1984 to
develop fair federal sentencing guidelines, concluded that the
violence resulted from neighborhood conditions, not the drug itself,
which was not appreciably different from powder cocaine either in its
chemical composition or the physical reactions of its users.

Although about two-thirds of crack users are white or Hispanic, the
commission found, more than 80 percent of those convicted in federal
courts of crack possession or trafficking in the mid-1990s were
black. The Supreme Court ruled last year that the sentencing
guidelines would be advisory, not mandatory. Some judges have begun
to depart from the guidelines. In one recent example, Judge Gregory
Presnell of U.S. District Court in Orlando, Fla., ruled, "Unless one
assumes the penalties for powder cocaine are vastly too low, then the
far-higher penalties for crack are at odds with the seriousness of
the offense."

Now, there's a thought: If you don't think crack sentencing is too
severe for minor or first-time offenders, how about increasing the
penalties for powder cocaine?

Just imagine, for a moment, the alarm that would be generated by
parades of handcuffed pro athletes, fashion models, fraternity boys
and other charter members of the well-to-do silver coke spoon set,
all doing their perp walks in front of television cameras.

If that did not spur a renewed public demand for humane alternatives
to long prison sentences, nothing would.