PANEL SAYS PENALTIES FOR CRACK, POWDER COCAINE SHOULD BE SAME

HARTFORD - Complaints that state law has created an unequal system of
penalties for crack and powdered cocaine that discriminates against urban
minorities prompted a General Assembly committee to take action Tuesday.

The legislature's Judiciary Committee voted 24-13 in favor of a bill to
equalize the penalties for possession of the two forms of cocaine. The
measure was sent to the state House for action.

Under current law, a person caught in possession of one-half of one gram of
crack cocaine could be sentenced to a mandatory minimum prison term of five
years. That sentence, however, wouldn't apply to someone arrested with
powdered cocaine unless they were carrying at least an ounce of the drug.

Crack has often been called the drug of choice for inner-city minorities,
while powdered cocaine has been preferred by white suburban drug users.
Minority lawmakers have long charged that the stiffer penalties for crack
are a major reason for the great racial disparities in Connecticut prisons.

"This proposal would undue that damage," said state Rep. Michael P. Lawlor,
D-East Haven. Lawlor is co-chairman of the judiciary panel and he urged
lawmakers to consider if state law created different penalties for
different types of offenses involving another drug, such as alcohol.

"Imagine if we had different penalties for being drunk on beer or on wine,"
Lawlor said.

Lawlor said the differing penalties for crack and powdered cocaine were
originally enacted in Connecticut at a time when there was a great deal of
violence associated with crack and it was assumed to be a much more potent
version of the drug.

He said studies of the issue have determined that the violence was actually
associated with the way criminals marketed crack rather than the use of
that version of cocaine.

Some lawmakers said the measure, which would call for a five-year mandatory
sentence for possession of an ounce of crack or an ounce of powdered
cocaine, might be going to far. They proposed changing the law to make the
mandatory sentence apply to half-ounce of either drug.

State Rep. Robert Farr, R-West Hartford, insisted that making that change
wouldn't send the wrong message that "the state of Connecticut will go
easy" on possession of crack.

But the committee rejected the proposed amendment.

State Rep. William R. Dyson, D-New Haven, argued that attempting to find a
compromise by lowering the penalty level for powdered cocaine and raising
it for crack wouldn't address the real inequities in the system.

"The impact (of the unequal penalties) has been disproportionate," Dyson
said. "It has fallen more heavily on certain segments of our population
than on others."

"We have had a war on drugs," said Dyson, who has campaigned for years
against the inequalities in Connecticut's drug sentencing system, "and the
damage from this war is extraordinary."