U.S. COURTS RECONSIDER HARSH PENALTIES FOR CRACK

WASHINGTON - In the spring of 1986, lawmakers were becoming alarmed by
reports of urban crime waves linked to what was then a new and highly
addictive form of cocaine called crack. News reports were full of
images of writhing "crack babies" deeply addicted to the drug through
their mothers, doomed to "a life of certain suffering, of probable
deviance, of permanent inferiority," as one columnist observed.

The sudden death that June of local basketball star Len Bias
galvanized Washington into passing the most draconian drug laws in the
nation's history. Selling as few as five grams of crack would bring a
mandatory five-year federal prison term, with no possibility of
parole. Now those laws are being questioned, and in some cases
relaxed, in the face of evidence that some predictions about the
ravages of crack were overblown - and that the harsh penalties have
been ineffective.

This month, the U.S. Sentencing Commission voted unanimously to reduce
the prison terms of as many as 19,500 federal inmates convicted of
crack-related crimes. The decision, which came the same week the U.S.
Supreme Court gave federal judges discretion to lower the sentences
for crack dealers, marks a milestone in the two-decade debate over the
drug.

Although there is no question that crack harms users, the grim
forecasts of empty lives for the children of crack-smoking mothers
were overblown. The effects "have not been as devastating as
originally believed," the National Institute on Drug Abuse said in
testimony before the sentencing commission last year.

Crack has the same effect on the human body as powder cocaine, and
poses "less risk" than exposure to alcohol or cigarettes, said Harolyn
Belcher, a developmental pediatrician at the Kennedy-Krieger Institute
for disabled children in Baltimore.

The stiff penalties also did not curb violent crime. Homicides
nationwide rose despite the new laws, increasing by about 25 percent
from 1985 to 1993.

"It was counterproductive," said Alfred Blumstein, a crime expert at
Carnegie Mellon University. "The replacements that got recruited into
the markets to replace the people that were being shipped off to
prison were a lot more dangerous than the people they replaced."

The violence eventually declined, but Blumstein said that was largely
because crack failed to attract new customers in light of its reported
health dangers. "Youthful offenders have moved on to other drugs," he
said.

It's also debatable whether the tougher laws had much impact on the
drug trade. Resilient drug markets continue to confound
law-enforcement efforts. After Congress enacted the stiff penalties
for crack, the street price of the drug actually declined for several
years, making it, in theory, even more available.

None of that was foreseen in the summer of 1986, when crack was
rapidly becoming the cheap wine of the drug trade, a lower-cost
cocaine alternative for poor neighborhoods. A tipping point in the
debate was the death of Bias, a University of Maryland basketball
player who suffered cardiac arrest blamed on a cocaine overdose two
days after he had been drafted by the Boston Celtics.

"The death of Bias was the fuse that set off this explosion [of
activity in Congress]," said Eric Sterling, who was then counsel for
the House subcommittee on crime. According to Sterling, lawmakers
believed that, "If a healthy, superb athlete like him can be struck
down by this drug, this country will be devastated if we don't act."

Although it was never determined whether Bias had been using crack or
powder cocaine, House Speaker Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neill made sure crack
was a top priority when Congress returned from summer recess.

The resulting legislation was even tougher than had been recommended
by the Reagan administration. Mandatory prison terms were set making a
drug dealer selling crack subject to the same sentence as one selling
100 times as much powder cocaine. Selling 50 grams of crack triggered
a 10-year term in federal prison, the same sentence for selling 5,000
grams of powder cocaine.

As a result, thousands of young black men, far and away the
predominant users of crack, would receive lengthy prison terms.

What's more, in its zeal to stem the destructive impact of crack,
Congress had set the threshold quantities for criminal charges so low
that prisons soon became jammed with many low-level dealers and
operators. About half the 4,000 to 5,000 people charged with crack
offenses in federal court every year are street dealers or couriers
rather than wholesale suppliers.

By the mid-1990s, it was apparent that violent street crime associated
with the drug was starting to abate and the dire, media-driven
predictions of generations of crack babies were suspect. The
sentencing commission began to recognize problems with the drug laws,
and in 1995 voted to make the guidelines for crack sentences the same
as for powder cocaine.

But Congress resoundingly intervened and blocked the more lenient
crack penalties.

The panel also recommended that lawmakers abolish the harsh mandatory
minimum sentences for crack offenders. But that recommendation, like
several it would make in ensuing years, went unheeded.

"I thought, 10 years ago, as the [crack] issue lost its prominence,
one would see more rational decision-making," said Peter Reuter,
professor of public policy at the University of Maryland and
co-director of the drug policy research center at RAND. Instead, he
said, "The issue lost its saliency; ... politicians lost interest."

Despite relaxation of the guidelines, people caught with crack cocaine
still will face long prison terms.

Mark Kleiman, a professor of public policy at the University of
California, Los Angeles, and expert on drug policy, said: "Nobody [in
Congress] wants to go home and explain why they let the crack dealers
out of prison."