A LONG OVERDUE REFORM OF FEDERAL DRUG SENTENCING

The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 resulted from a powerful combination
of social and political forces. The War on Drugs fervor of the 1980s
(and '90s), the emergence of crack cocaine and the growing political
popularity of mandatory sentences, especially for drugs and
drug-related crimes, all seemed to reinforce one another. The cocaine
overdose death of basketball star Len Bias and the violence that
accompanied the crack epidemic only added to the reaction.

Among the results were some unfortunate and mostly unintended
consequences. Get-tough crime laws, of the kind that would make "zero
tolerance" a familiar and ultimately discredited term, left little
room for judicial discretion or common-sense distinctions. One result
was to waste scarce and expensive prison space on nonviolent drug offenders.

Another was the passage of federal laws on crack so out of proportion
with penalties for possession of the powder form of the drug as to
defy simple reason, not to mention constitutional principles of equal
treatment. In effect, if not intent, the laws constituted a kind of
race and class warfare: Mostly poor, mostly black drug users typically
buy the cheaper crack, while powder cocaine is historically the drug
of choice for mostly white, mostly affluent users. Yet it took 100
times the amount of powder to trigger the same mandatory 10-year
prison sentence as was imposed for crack possession.

Congress belatedly addressed that gross inequity last year in the Fair
Sentencing Act of 2010. And while there are still some inexplicable
disparities, the gap has been narrowed dramatically.

The practical and problematic result is that the amendment becomes
retroactive Nov. 1, meaning as many as 12,000 federal prisoners could
qualify for release under the new guidelines. That prospect has to
give everybody pause, whatever one's convictions about fairness in
sentencing. (The Bureau of Prisons estimates the savings from those
releases at more than $200 million over the next five years.)

Some drug offenders will of course be ineligible for release --
because of the amounts for which they were sentenced, or the criminal
records they had already accumulated before they went to prison on
drug charges. A federal probation officer in Macon told the
Ledger-Enquirer's Jim Mustian that there are about 20 prisoners from
Georgia's Middle District who might be eligible, but that "it is the
judge's ultimate decision after considering a number of factors
whether or not they are released immediately."

If the Red Ribbon Week reports on cocaine underscore anything, it's
the devastation this drug has wrought on families, on neighborhoods,
on society. We make no case for drug dealer amnesty, any more than
Congress did in reforming the sentencing laws last year.

The issue here is not leniency, but fairness. Small-time crack users
shouldn't be treated like drug kingpins under a law affluent coke
snorters never had to worry about.