The Drug, Not It's Form

An editorial in The Dallas Morning News entitled, The Drug Not It's Form, outlines the racial bias in the sentencing of cocaine or "crack" offenders because of a legislation passed called the 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act. The editorial outlines the governments paranoia at the growing use of the cheaper form of cocaine, otherwise known as crack, during the 80's. Apparently, the legislation made it so that even possessing the smallest amount of crack that would normally not register as "possession" was enough to put a person in jail for 5 to 10 years minimum. The problem with this, is first, because crack is the cheaper version of cocaine, it is used heavily in inner cities, which as we all know is comprised mostly of minorities, to be specific African Americans, and this causes racial bias in the amount of Blacks sentenced to prison because of crack possession, and secondly, because the punishment is so severe that it is equated in the editorial to "instituting far harsher sentences for "cheese" dealers than someone caught with a like amount of pure black-tar heroin." Lastly, the article states that cocaine is cocaine, no matter which form it is in and the punishment is too harsh for crack and not as harsh for cocaine.

Mr. Biden, a presidential candidate, said he would build on the U.S. Sentencing Commission, which lowered the federal guidelines for crack offenders as of Nov. 1.

I think this debate is petty and worthless. They are arguing over the "fairness" of punishment between the same drug in its many forms. Since we are using cheese analogies, that's like arguing over yellow vs. white cheese. As far as lowering the federal guidelines for crack offenders, I think that is probably not the smartest move. What should happen, is that they increase the penalties of people caught with regular cocaine so that it matches that of crack. Not to mention, the reason there is a racial bias is because crack is cheaper than pure cocaine, therefore, in inner city areas where there are larger populations of minorities including blacks, crack will be more prevalent than cocaine, which is why you see a skew to one race over another. I don't think this has anything to do with a race issue to be quite honest, and don't really understand why it was made one. I may be seeing this as a black and white issue, but doing drugs is a punishable offense that people take whenever they decide to do drugs, whether it be their first time or they are now an addict. Make the penalties as harshly equal for each illegal substance and then it eliminates racial bias based on the type of drug that it is and also gives a clearer message about the kind of punishment a drug user will receive. Consistency is the main issue here.

To read this article for yourself, go to: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/editorials/stories/DN-cocaine_28edi.ART.State.Edition1.36aab26.html