CHIPPING AT TOUGH CRACK SENTENCING

Laws Were Ineffective and the Drug's Ravages Overblown, Experts Say.

WASHINGTON -- In the spring of 1986, lawmakers had become alarmed by
reports of urban crime waves linked to crack, then a new and highly
addictive form of cocaine. 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 basketball star Len Bias galvanized
Washington into passing extraordinarily strict drug laws. Selling as
little as 5 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 were 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 a day
after the U.S. Supreme Court gave federal judges discretion to
deviate from strict drug sentencing guidelines, marked a milestone in
the two-decade debate over the drug.

Though there is no debate 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 body over time as powder cocaine,
and poses "less risk" than exposure to alcohol or cigarettes, said
Harolyn M. E. 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% from
1985 to 1993.

"It was counterproductive," said Alfred Blumstein, a crime expert at
Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. "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 effect on the
drug trade. Resilient drug markets continue to confound
law-enforcement efforts. After Congress enacted stiff penalties for
crack, the drug's street price declined for several years, making it,
in theory, 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 E. 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, then-House Speaker Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neill Jr. made
crack a top priority when Congress returned from summer recess.
Democrats, hoping to retake control of the Senate that fall, seized
on the issue as a way to show their stripes in attacking crime.

The resulting legislation was 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.

Thousands of young African American men, the predominant users and
sellers of crack, were given lengthy prison terms.

What's more, in their zeal to stem crack's destructive effect,
Congress set the amount that would trigger criminal charges so low
that prisons soon became jammed with 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, 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 voted in 1995 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," and "politicians lost interest."

In an October 2000 interview, then-President Clinton said the failure
to address the disparity between crack and powder cocaine sentences
was one of the major regrets of his administration.

Richard P. Conaboy, a federal judge in Scranton, Pa., who was
chairman of the sentencing commission in 1995, laments the missed
opportunity. "I was quite naive at the time," he said. "I was led to
believe that the report would be accepted."

Conaboy said the actions taken this month were steps in the right
direction, if less sweeping than his panel's recommendation. "Our
form of government does take a long, long time to bring about any
change," he said. "There is an inclination . . . not to admit that
you were not exactly right the first time."

Despite relaxation of the guidelines, people caught with crack
cocaine still will face long prison terms. Congress so far has
refused to retreat from the "mandatory minimum" laws that require
prison terms of at least five years for possession of crack cocaine.

But some lawmakers have been pressing for change. Calling it "a
terrible flaw in the criminal justice system," Sen. Joseph R. Biden
Jr. (D-Del.), a Democratic presidential candidate, proposes
eliminating the 100-to-1 disparity between powder and crack cocaine.

Reps. Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-Texas) and Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.)
have introduced similar bills in the House.

Sens. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) and Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) -- have
proposed raising the amount of crack cocaine that would trigger a
mandatory prison term.

But none of these proposals has won approval from the judiciary
committees of the House or Senate.

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