By The Editors

The blatant injustice of the federal sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine still has the power to shock.

The current federal law mandates far more severe sentences for low-level offenses involving crack cocaine than powder cocaine, even though the former is no more addictive or dangerous than the latter: A first-time conviction for possessing just 5 grams of crack–which has the weight of two sugar packets–brings a 5-year sentence. It takes possession of 500 grams of powder cocaine to bring a mandatory 5-year sentence.

That sentencing disparity and the disparity in where law agencies’ concentrate their efforts to stop the low-level buying and selling of drugs has produced an even more startling demographic disparity in federal prisons. Although black Americans make up 13 percent of the U.S. population and 14 percent of monthly illegal drug users, they constitute more than 80 percent of those convicted of a federal crack cocaine offense, according to data gathered by The Sentencing Project, which advocates reforms of the criminal justice system.

Now, after more than two decades of agitation, the moment to correct the injustice may be at hand. Last week the House subcommittee on crime held a hearing on several bills that seek to eliminate the sentencing disparity for possession and selling of crack and powder cocaine. The bills’ chief sponsors are, respectively: Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, R-MD, Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee, D-TX, Rep. Charles Rangel, D-NY, Rep. Bobby Scott, D-VA, and Rep. Maxine Waters, D-CA.

• H.R. 1459: To improve Medicare beneficiary access by extending the 60 percent compliance threshold used to…
• H.R. 1466: Major Drug Trafficking Prosecution Act of 2009
• H.R. 265: Drug Sentencing Reform and Cocaine Kingpin Trafficking Act of 2009
• H.R. 2178: Crack-Cocaine Equitable Sentencing Act of 2009
• H.R. 18: Powder-Crack Cocaine Penalty Equalization Act of 2009

Reform of the law has a better chance than at any time since the federal law was enacted in 1986 for three reasons: The lopsided weight of evidence against the disparate sentences; the fact that the Democrats control both chambers of Congress; and the Obama administration’s unequivocal support for eliminating the disparity.  Last week Lanny A. Breuer, head of the Justice Department’s criminal division, told a House subcommittee (PDF) that “We believe now is the time … to re-examine federal cocaine sentencing policy – from the perspective of both fundamental fairness and public safety.” The administration’s positions marks the first time since the federal law’s enactment in 1986 that a presidential administration has supported his revision.

Breuer was among nearly a dozen federal officials, representatives of law enforcement groups, prison reform advocates and sponsors of the House reform measures who told the subcommittee that the time was long past for equalizing law enforcement’s treatment of violators of the laws against possession and usage of the two varieties of cocaine.  Marc Mauer, executive director of The Sentencing Project, criticized the “fundamental inequities that uniquely exist within the federal drug laws for crack cocaine, as well as the inefficiencies in enforcement operations that result from these laws.”

Chief among the inequities, he said, is that although black Americans comprise a third of regular crack cocaine users in the U.S., they “disproportionately face the most severe drug penalties in the federal system.” Mauer pointed out that several recent studies have found that blacks are substantially more likely than whites to receive the mandatory minimum sentence for crack cocaine possession. He called the disparate sentences “blunt instrument of punishment” that, because they have largely been levied against low-level dealers, have been “ineffective” in significantly reducing the cocaine scourge.